rom her now, by the by, seemed the old life with which she had
been familiar for so many years! the life of simple duties, of easy
routine, of praise and tenderness and placid contentment. She was out in
the world now, as other girls were who had once shared with her the
convent life near Paris. Where were they now--Aglae and Marthe and
Lucile and Anastasie? Did they all find life in the world as difficult
as Lesley found it?
No, there was little chance, she decided, of acting as a mediatrix
between her parents. Her father would not listen to any word she might
say. And she was quite sure that she could never speak of his private
affairs to him. They had been divided so many years; they were strangers
now, not father and daughter, as they ought to be.
Curious to relate, a feeling of resentment against the decree that had
so long severed her from him rose up in Lesley's heart. It was not exactly
a feeling of resentment against her mother. Rather it was a protest against
fate--the fate that had made that father a sealed book to her, although
known and read of all the world beside. If there _were_ admirable things in
his nature, why had she been kept in ignorance of them?--why told the one
ugly fact of his life which seemed to throw all the rest into shadow? It
was not fair, Lesley very characteristically remarked to herself: it
certainly was not fair.
If he was so distinguished a man in literature as Maurice Kenyon
represented him to be, why had she never been allowed to read his books?
She wanted, for the first time, to read something that he had written.
She supposed she might; for there was no one now to choose her books for
her. Only a day or two before she had dutifully asked her Aunt Sophia if
she might read a book that Ethel had lent her (it was the yellow-backed
novel, the sight of which had made Maurice so angry), and she had said,
with her horrid little laugh--oh, how Lesley hated Aunt Sophy's
laugh!----
"Good heavens, child, read what you like! You're old enough!"
And Lesley had felt crushed, but resolved to avail herself of the
permission. But where should she find her father's works? She would cut
out her tongue before she asked Aunt Sophy for them, or her father, or
the Kenyons, or Mrs. Romaine.
She set to work to search the library shelves, and was soon rewarded by
the discovery of a set of _Tribunes_, a weekly paper in which she knew
that her father wrote. She turned over the leaves, with a daz
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