ethics.

And there was Clementina, of whose judgment Grant had spoken so
persistently,--could she assist him? It was true, as he had said, he
had never talked to her of his affairs. In his sometimes uneasy
consciousness of her superiority he had shrunk from even revealing his
anxieties, much less his actual secret, and from anything that might
prejudice the lofty paternal attitude he had taken towards his daughters
from the beginning of his good fortune. He was never quite sure if her
acceptance of it was real; he was never entirely free from a certain
jealousy that always mingled with his pride in her superior rectitude;
and yet his feeling was distinct from the good-natured contempt he
had for his wife's loyalty, the anger and suspicion that his son's
opposition had provoked, and the half-affectionate toleration he had
felt for Euphemia's waywardness. However he would sound Clementina
without betraying himself.

He was anticipated by a slight step in the passage and the pushing open
of his study door. The tall, graceful figure of the girl herself stood
in the opening.

"They tell me Mr. Grant has been here. Does he stay to dinner?"

"No, he has an engagement at the hotel, but he will probably drop in
later. Come in, Clemmy, I want to talk to you. Shut the door and sit
down."

She slipped in quietly, shut the door, took a seat on the sofa, softly
smoothed down her gown, and turned her graceful head and serenely
composed face towards him. Sitting thus she looked like some finely
finished painting that decorated rather than belonged to the room,--not
only distinctly alien to the flesh and blood relative before her, but
to the house, and even the local, monotonous landscape beyond the window
with the shining new shingles and chimneys that cut the new blue sky.
These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the
exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures.
With a daughter so incomparably gifted,--a matchless creation that was
enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius
had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left
it,--that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy
that Providence could not allow! What was his mere venial transgression
to this exaggerated retribution?

"Clemmy, girl, I'm going to ask you a question. Listen, pet." He had
begun with a reminiscent tenderness of the epoch of her childhood, but