Into everything apparently his fat fingers were inserted; her father
saw his rounded shadow behind every door, his rosy cheeks at every window.
And yet it was very difficult to discover what exactly it was that he had
done! Now, whatever it might be that went wrong in the Brandon house, in
the Cathedral, in the town, her father was certain that Ronder was
responsible,--but proof. Well, there wasn't any. And it was precisely
this absence of proof that built up the obsession.
Everywhere that Ronder went he spoke enthusiastically about the
Archdeacon. These compliments came back to Joan again and again. "If
there's one man in this town I admire----" "What would this town be
without----" "We're lucky, indeed, to have the Archdeacon----" And yet was
there not behind all these things a laugh, a jest, a mocking tone,
something that belonged in spirit to that horrible day when the elephant
had trodden upon her father's hat?
She loved her father, and she loved him twice as dearly since one night
when on driving up to the Castle he had held her hand. But now the
obsession had killed the possibility of any tenderness between them; she
longed to be able to do something that would show him how strongly she was
his partisan, to insult Canon Ronder in the market-place, to turn her back
when he spoke to her--and, at the same time, intermingled with this hot
championship was irritation that her father should allow himself to be
obsessed by this.
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