Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/285

, my own precious child, so disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in making for her that her own mother had n't recog nised her! She knew me, but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked so angry. Oh, of course, after what I had seen, the poor face of me, off my guard, must have told things! I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home post haste, pulled off her rags and, as I may say, wrapped her up in velvet and ermine. I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a priceless treasure! Every day after that the certainty grew. From that time I lived only for my daughter. I watched her, I fondled her from morning till night, I worshipped her. I went to see doctors about her. I took every sort of advice. I was determined she should be perfection. The things that have been done for that girl, sir—you would n't believe them; they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told that she must have every morning a bath of millefleurs, at fifty francs a pint, I would have found means to give it to her. She never raised a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked, she slept upon flowers. She never was out of my sight, and from that day to this I 've never said a nasty word to her. By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel, and so noticed, wherever we went, that I had to make her wear a veil like a woman of twenty. Her hair reached down to her feet, her hands were the hands of an empress. Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful and that she had only to 251