"I should be a
little afraid of any one who could talk like that about his own child."
He smiled softly.
"You have the quality," he said, "which I admire most in your sex, and
find most seldom. You are candid. You come from a little world where
sentiment almost governs life. It is not so here. I am a kind man, I
believe, but I am also just. My daughter deceived me, and for deceit I
have no forgiveness. Do you still think me cruel, Virginia?"
"I am wondering," she answered frankly. "You see, I have read about you
in the papers, and I was terribly frightened when mother told me that I
was to come. Directly I saw you, you seemed quite a different person,
and now again I am afraid."
"Ah!" he sighed, "that terrible Press of ours! They told you, I suppose,
that I was hard, unscrupulous, unforgiving, a money-making machine, and
all the rest of it. Do you think that I look like that, Virginia?"
"I am very sure that you do not," she answered.
"You will know me better, I hope, in a year or so's time," he said. "If
you wish to please me, there are two things which you have to remember,
and which I expect from you. One is absolute, implicit obedience, the
other is absolute, unvarying truth.
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