He did not know this daughter of his very
well. There was that in her which was far beyond his ken. Thousands of
miles away in Spain it had origin, and the stream of tendency came down
through long generations, by courses unknown to him.
"Marry him--you want to marry him!" he gasped. "You, my Zoe, want to
marry that tramp of a Protestant!"
Her eyes blazed in anger. Tramp--the man with the air of a young
Alexander, with a voice like the low notes of the guitar thrown to the
flames! Tramp!
"If I love him I ought to marry him," she answered with a kind of
calmness, however, though all her body was quivering. Suddenly she came
close to her father, a great sympathy welled up in her eyes, and her
voice shook.
"I do not want to leave you, father, and I never meant to do so. I never
thought of it as possible; but now it is different. I want to stay with
you; but I want to go with him too."
Presently as she seemed to weaken before him, he hardened. "You can't
have both," he declared with as much sternness as was possible to him,
and with a Norman wilfulness which was not strength.
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