True, he did not love her--on the contrary, he disliked her--but, all
the same, she was his child; and, dissected, realized, it was rather
an awful thing that she had said. It showed an amount of hatred and
contempt which went far beyond his dislike for her, and made him
shudder at the strength of feeling, the tenacity of hate, in one so
young.
If more absurdity than good sense is talked about natural affection,
still there is a residuum of fact underneath the folly; and Leam's
words had struck down to that small residuum in her father's heart. It
was not that he was wounded sentimentally so much as in his sense of
proprietorship, his paternal superiority, and he was angry rather than
sorrowful. It made him feel that he had borne with her waywardness
long enough now: it was time to put a stop to it. "Now, Leam, no more
insolence and no more nonsense," he said sternly. "You have tried my
patience long enough. This day month I marry Madame de Montfort, with
or without your pleasure, my little girl. In a month after that I
bring her home here as my wife, consequently your mother, the mistress
of the house and of you.
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