Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/224

214 said, and I was unreasonable to wish it. What was my father to me? I had never seen him, but once since I was a baby, and I well knew he had never cared a stiver about me;—and my brother too, was little better than a stranger.

"Besides, dear Helen," said he, embracing me with flattering fondness, "I cannot spare you for a single day."

"Then how have you managed without me, these many days?" said I.

"Ah! then I was knocking about the world, now I am at home; and home without you, my household deity would be intolerable."

"Yes, as long as I am necessary to your comfort; but you did not say so before, when you urged me to leave you, in order that you might get away from your home without me," retorted I; but before the words were well out of my mouth, I regretted having uttered them. It seemed so heavy a charge: if false, too gross an insult; if true, too humiliating a fact to be thus openly cast in his teeth. But I might have