Armine, Chapter XXXI-XXXIII [pp. 544-569]

1884.] ARMIArE. 567
house came voluntarily to acknowledge and receive you-what
then?"
She paused a moment before answeflng, and he saw an indescribable change come over her face-a change such as he
had often observed when she was touched by a high or beautiful thought. And when she spoke her voice was like a
chord of music-so many different tones of feeling blended into
it.
"What then?" she repeated. " Only this: that it would
be a noble thing for the head of such a house to do, granting
that he believed the claim to be just, but that I have no desire
for the recognition or acknowledgment."
"Yet it was your father's dying wish," said D'Antignac.
She looked at him with a glance which, even before she
spoke, seemed to disarm his power of objection; it was at once
so pathetic and so full of the meaning which greater knowledge
of a subject gives.
"My father's dying wish has a different significance to you
and to me," she said sadly. " Yoa regard it, no doubt, as dictated by solicitude for me, for my personal prosperity and happiness. But I know my father better than to fancy that. He
had not one set of opin{ons for his public life and another for
his private life; he did n~t preach to others that property
and rank are crimes against the brotherhood of humanity, yet
grasp at them himself. He was wrong-he was m~d, if you
will-but I, who spent my life with him, would stake my existence on his sincerity." She paused, for her voice was choked
with emotion; but controlling herself after a minute, she went
on: "Do you think, therefore, that he wished me to claim rank
and wealth in order that I might enjoy privileges that he held
to be robbery? Ah! no. What he desired-I know it as certainly as if he had told me-was that I should use them for
the ends that /~ desired, and to which he had given all his
own fortune and the labor of his life. I understand now with
perfect clearness why it was only after that unhappy visit to
Marigny that he began to concern himself about what I believed, and to endeavor to mould and bend my faitb. I remember well how he said that he had thought lightly of my
opinions as`merely a girl's fancy' until he found that there
might be power in my hand for evil or for good; I did not
understand him then, but I understand now. The power for
good or evil was the inheritance of Marigny, which he thought
might be mine. Do you think, then, that he would have wished