An Original Belle | Page 8

women in your circle of acquaintances, and
have made it quite clear what pleases you."
"Satire again," she said, despondently. "I thought perhaps you could
advise and help me."
He came and took her face between his hands, looking earnestly into
her troubled blue eyes.
"Are you not content to be a conventional woman?" he asked, after a
moment.

"No!" was her emphatic answer.
"Well, there are many ways of being a little outre in this age and land,
especially at this stormy period. Perhaps you want a career,--something
that will give you a larger place in the public eye?"
She turned away to hide the tears that would come. "O papa, you don't
understand me at all, and I scarcely understand myself," she faltered.
"In some respects you are as conventional as mamma, and are almost a
Turk in your ideas of the seclusion of women. The idea of my wanting
public notoriety! As I feel now, I'd rather go to a convent."
"We'll go to dinner first; then a short drive in the park, for you look
pale, and I long for a little fresh air myself. I have been at my desk
since seven this morning, and have had only a sandwich."
"Why do you have to work so hard, papa?"
"I can give you two reasons in a breath,--you mentioned 'shopping,' and
my country is at war. They don't seem very near of kin, do they?
Documents relating to both converge in my desk, however."
"Have I sent you more bills than usual?"
"Not more than usual."
"I believe I'm a fool."
"I know you are a very pretty little girl, who will feel better after dinner
and a drive," was the laughing reply.
They were soon seated in a quiet family restaurant, but the young girl
was too perturbed in mind to enjoy the few courses ordered. With
self-reproach she recognized the truth that she was engaged in the
rather unusual occupation of becoming acquainted with her father. He
sat before her, with his face, generally stern and inscrutable, softened
by a desire to be companionable and sympathetic. According to his
belief she now had "a mood," and after a day or two of quiet retirement
from the world she would relapse into her old enjoyment of social
attention, which would be all the deeper for its brief interruption.
Mr. Vosburgh was of German descent. In his daily life he had become
Americanized, and was as practical in his methods as the shrewd
people with whom he dealt, and whom he often outwitted. Apart from
this habit of coping with life just as he found it, he had an inner nature
of which few ever caught a glimpse,--a spirit and an imagination deeply
tinged with German ideality and speculation. Often, when others slept,
this man, who appeared so resolute, hard, and uncompromising in the

performance of duties, and who was understood by but few, would read
deeply in metaphysics and romantic poetry. Therefore, the men and
women who dwelt in his imagination were not such as he had much to
do with in real life. Indeed, he had come to regard the world of reality
and that of fancy as entirely distinct, and to believe that only here and
there, as a man or woman possessed something like genius, would there
be a marked deviation from ordinary types. The slight differences, the
little characteristic meannesses or felicities that distinguished one from
another, did not count for very much in his estimation. When a
knowledge of such individual traits was essential to his plans, he
mastered them with singular keenness and quickness of comprehension.
When such knowledge was unnecessary, or as soon as it ceased to be of
service, he dismissed the extraneous personalities from his mind almost
as completely as if they had had no existence. Few men were less
embarrassed with acquaintances than he; yet he had an observant eye
and a retentive memory. When he wanted a man he rarely failed to find
the right one. In the selection and use of men he appeared to act like an
intelligent and silent force, rather than as a man full of human interests
and sympathies. He rarely spoke of himself, even in the most casual
way. Most of those with whom he mingled knew merely that he was an
agent of the government, and that he kept his own counsel. His wife
was to him a type of the average American woman,--pretty,
self-complacent, so nervous as to require kind, even treatment, content
with feminalities, and sufficiently intelligent to talk well upon
every-day affairs. In her society he smiled at her, said "Yes,"
good-humoredly, to almost everything, and found slight incentive to
depart from his usual reticence. She had learned the limits of her range,
and knew