“You had better,” said her father, with a smile, “take care what ideas on that subject you put into your sister’s head.”
Constance paused, and looked at Frances with a look which was half scrutinising, half contemptuous. “Oh, she is not like me,” she said. “Mamma was very aggravating, as you know she can be. She wanted me---- But I’ll tell you after.” And then she began: “I hope, because you live in Italy, papa, you don’t think you ought to be a medieval parent; but that sort of thing in Belgravia, you know, is too ridiculous. It was so out of the question that it was some time before I understood. It was not exactly a case of being locked up in my room and kept on bread and water; but something of the sort. I was so much astonished at first, I did not know what to do; and then it became intolerable. I had nobody I could appeal to, for everybody agreed with her. Markham is generally a safe person; but even Markham took her side. So I immediately thought of you. I said to myself, One’s father is the right person to protect one. And I knew, of course, that if anybody in the world could understand how impossible it is to live with mamma when she has taken a thing into her head, it would be you.”
Waring kept his eye upon Frances while this was being said, with an almost comic embarrassment. It was half laughable; but it was painful, as so many laughable things are; and there was something like alarm, or rather timidity, in the look. The man looked afraid of the little girl--whom all her life he had treated as a child--and her clear sensible eyes.
“One thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words,” he said.
“Oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them,” said Constance. “I always say what I mean. And you must know that things went very far--so far that I couldn’t put up with it any longer; so I made up my mind all at once that I would come off to you.”
“And I tell you, you are welcome, my dear. It is so long since I saw you that I could not have recognised you. That is natural enough. But now that you are here--I cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till I know all the circumstances----”
“Oh, wisdom! I don’t suppose there is any wisdom about it. No one expects wisdom from me. But what could I do? There was nothing else that I could do.”