Ann Veronica. Герберт Уэллс

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      “She said, ‘I hate being horrid to you and father, but I feel it my duty to go to that ball!’”

      “Felt it her duty!”

      “‘Very well,’ I said, ‘then I wash my hands of the whole business. Your disobedience be upon your own head.’”

      “But that is flat rebellion!” said Mr. Stanley, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the unlit gas-fire. “You ought at once – you ought at once to have told her that. What duty does a girl owe to any one before her father? Obedience to him, that is surely the first law. What CAN she put before that?” His voice began to rise. “One would think I had said nothing about the matter. One would think I had agreed to her going. I suppose this is what she learns in her infernal London colleges. I suppose this is the sort of damned rubbish – ”

      “Oh! Ssh, Peter!” cried Miss Stanley.

      He stopped abruptly. In the pause a door could be heard opening and closing on the landing up-stairs. Then light footsteps became audible, descending the staircase with a certain deliberation and a faint rustle of skirts.

      “Tell her,” said Mr. Stanley, with an imperious gesture, “to come in here.”

      Part 2

      Miss Stanley emerged from the study and stood watching Ann Veronica descend.

      The girl was flushed with excitement, bright-eyed, and braced for a struggle; her aunt had never seen her looking so fine or so pretty. Her fancy dress, save for the green-gray stockings, the pseudo-Turkish slippers, and baggy silk trousered ends natural to a Corsair’s bride, was hidden in a large black-silk-hooded opera-cloak. Beneath the hood it was evident that her rebellious hair was bound up with red silk, and fastened by some device in her ears (unless she had them pierced, which was too dreadful a thing to suppose!) were long brass filigree earrings.

      “I’m just off, aunt,” said Ann Veronica.

      “Your father is in the study and wishes to speak to you.”

      Ann Veronica hesitated, and then stood in the open doorway and regarded her father’s stern presence. She spoke with an entirely false note of cheerful off-handedness. “I’m just in time to say good-bye before I go, father. I’m going up to London with the Widgetts to that ball.”

      “Now look here, Ann Veronica,” said Mr. Stanley, “just a moment. You are NOT going to that ball!”

      Ann Veronica tried a less genial, more dignified note.

      “I thought we had discussed that, father.”

      “You are not going to that ball! You are not going out of this house in that get-up!”

      Ann Veronica tried yet more earnestly to treat him, as she would treat any man, with an insistence upon her due of masculine respect. “You see,” she said, very gently, “I AM going. I am sorry to seem to disobey you, but I am. I wish” – she found she had embarked on a bad sentence – “I wish we needn’t have quarrelled.”

      She stopped abruptly, and turned about toward the front door. In a moment he was beside her. “I don’t think you can have heard me, Vee,” he said, with intensely controlled fury. “I said you were” – he shouted – “NOT TO GO!”