Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/269

 be. And he had about succeeded at that; she was honorably desired by a young man whom, if not a favorite with Charles Hale, any one would call a good match, and who was a clean, able fellow, certain to win great success and make with her an enviable home here in Evanston or in Lake Forest or Chicago.

Now he, her father, had destroyed all that for her, he knew; he had turned her face about from proceeding to her place in a home. If that might prove the most he had done to her, it might not be so bad; it might even, in the end, become a benefit to her—so he began to argue with himself.

He was feeling for compensations, for some way of believing that a good to his daughter might after all come out of this damage he had done; and he desperately required to convince himself that there might be compensations; so he thought:

"She was a fine, able girl; she had any amount of promise; she might do anything! Yet how many fine, able girls with any amount of promise you see in all the homes like mine along the north shore and down into the city. And how few, how very, very few, of the women you see in those homes, amount to a hill of beans. How futile and inane they all are, doing nothing; phantom things, that's all. Phantom tasks, phantom labors, that's all they perform, for the phantom triumphs of overcoming them—unless they've given up even the pretense of usefulness and go in for bridge and gadding. Ninnies!" he said that aloud to himself. "Ninnies!"

Then he more vigorously reacted; Marjorie had disappeared, as she had, partly to frighten and punish him; and he would not be frightened, particularly after he learned from a letter written on the boat by his wife