Ann Veronica | Page 8

with the Widgett girls about a Fancy
Dress Ball in London. I gather you wish to go up in some fantastic
get-up, wrapped about in your opera cloak, and that after the festivities
you propose to stay with these friends of yours, and without any older
people in your party, at an hotel. Now I am sorry to cross you in
anything you have set your heart upon, but I regret to say--"
"H'm," he reflected, and crossed out the last four words.
"--but this cannot be."
"No," he said, and tried again: "but I must tell you quite definitely that I
feel it to be my duty to forbid any such exploit."
"Damn!" he remarked at the defaced letter; and, taking a fresh sheet, he
recopied what he had written. A certain irritation crept into his manner
as he did so.
"I regret that you should ever have proposed it," he went on.
He meditated, and began a new paragraph.

"The fact of it is, and this absurd project of yours only brings it to a
head, you have begun to get hold of some very queer ideas about what
a young lady in your position may or may not venture to do. I do not
think you quite understand my ideals or what is becoming as between
father and daughter. Your attitude to me--"
He fell into a brown study. It was so difficult to put precisely.
"--and your aunt--"
For a time he searched for the mot juste. Then he went on:
"--and, indeed, to most of the established things in life is, frankly,
unsatisfactory. You are restless, aggressive, critical with all the crude
unthinking criticism of youth. You have no grasp upon the essential
facts of life (I pray God you never may), and in your rash ignorance
you are prepared to dash into positions that may end in lifelong regret.
The life of a young girl is set about with prowling pitfalls."
He was arrested for a moment by an indistinct picture of Veronica
reading this last sentence. But he was now too deeply moved to trace a
certain unsatisfactoriness to its source in a mixture of metaphors.
"Well," he said, argumentatively, "it IS. That's all about it. It's time she
knew."
"The life of a young girl is set about with prowling pitfalls, from which
she must be shielded at all costs."
His lips tightened, and he frowned with solemn resolution.
"So long as I am your father, so long as your life is entrusted to my care,
I feel bound by every obligation to use my authority to check this odd
disposition of yours toward extravagant enterprises. A day will come
when you will thank me. It is not, my dear Veronica, that I think there
is any harm in you; there is not. But a girl is soiled not only by evil but
by the proximity of evil, and a reputation for rashness may do her as
serious an injury as really reprehensible conduct. So do please believe
that in this matter I am acting for the best."

He signed his name and reflected. Then he opened the study door and
called "Mollie!" and returned to assume an attitude of authority on the
hearthrug, before the blue flames and orange glow of the gas fire.
His sister appeared.
She was dressed in one of those complicated dresses that are all lace
and work and confused patternings of black and purple and cream
about the body, and she was in many ways a younger feminine version
of the same theme as himself. She had the same sharp nose--which,
indeed, only Ann Veronica, of all the family, had escaped. She carried
herself well, whereas her brother slouched, and there was a certain
aristocratic dignity about her that she had acquired through her long
engagement to a curate of family, a scion of the Wiltshire
Edmondshaws. He had died before they married, and when her brother
became a widower she had come to his assistance and taken over much
of the care of his youngest daughter. But from the first her rather
old-fashioned conception of life had jarred with the suburban
atmosphere, the High School spirit and the memories of the light and
little Mrs. Stanley, whose family had been by any reckoning
inconsiderable--to use the kindliest term. Miss Stanley had determined
from the outset to have the warmest affection for her youngest niece
and to be a second mother in her life--a second and a better one; but she
had found much to battle with, and there was much in herself that Ann
Veronica failed to understand. She came in now with an air of reserved
solicitude.
Mr. Stanley pointed to the letter with a pipe he had drawn from his
jacket pocket. "What do you