"
"Not to-night; I am dining at the hotel," said Grant, smilingly; "but I
will come in later in the evening if I may." He paused hesitatingly for
a moment. "Have your wife and daughter ever expressed any opinion on
this matter?"
"No," said Harcourt. "Mrs. Harcourt knows nothing of anything that does
not happen IN the house; Euphemia knows only the things that happen out
of it where she is visiting--and I suppose that young men prefer to
talk to her about other things than the slanders of her father. And
Clementina--well, you know how calm and superior to these things SHE
is."
"For that very reason I thought that perhaps she might be able to see
them more clearly,--but no matter! I dare say you are quite right in
not discussing them at home." This was the fact, although Grant had not
forgotten that Harcourt had put forward his daughters as a reason for
stopping the scandal some weeks before,--a reason which, however, seemed
never to have been borne out by any apparent sensitiveness of the girls
themselves.
When Grant had left, Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastly
gazing from the window over the Tasajara plain. He had not lost his
look of concentrated power, nor his determination to fight. A struggle
between himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessary
stimulus for its own sake,--for the sake of his mental and physical
equipoise.
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