Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/80

70 rather more self-willed and obstinate than the generality of men. He, no doubt, told her that he did not wish to wed her dowry or her father, but herself alone; and, at last, he obtained her consent formally to write to her father. But M. Phlipon's conduct on this occasion showed that whatever good humour and geniality might have originally been his, had now turned into the most unmitigated scoundrelism. Not content with beggaring his daughter, his baseless spite now begrudged her this prospect of a settled home: probably the idea of finding a censor in this virtuous son-in-law galled his vanity. At any rate, after having vainly tried to tease her and flatter her and scold her into taking a husband, he now wrote a rude and humiliating refusal to Roland, of which he only informed his daughter after the event.

This last drop filled her cup to overflowing. She considered that her father might possibly pay more attention to his business if left entirely to his own devices, and that it would be more becoming in herself to make some kind of livelihood than drift into helpless destitution along with him. No sooner had she come to this resolution than she informed Roland that, fearful of becoming the source of fresh humiliations to him, she begged him to desist from his suit. Thus, without an open rupture, she, at the age of five-and-twenty, left the home which had been such a scene of "carking cares" since her mother's death.

With her vigorous health and robust frame, Manon could laugh at privations, and there would have been nothing very painful in her lot, but that all the avenues to the nobler kinds of work were closed to her, and that, with her incomparable powers, there yet seemed nothing for her to do but, if possible, to teach