Félise flared up. She did not lack spirit.
“It is false,” she cried. “I adore my Uncle Gaspard. I would give him my life. I am not ungrateful. It is worse than false.”
“It is true,” retorted Madame Robineau. “Otherwise you would not refuse him the desire of his heart. Without him you would have not a rag to your back, or a shoe to your foot, and no more religion than a heathen. It is to him you owe everything—everything. Without him you would be in the gutter where he fished you from.”
She ended on a shrill note. Félise, very pale, faced her passionately, with a new light in her mild eyes.
“What do you mean? The gutter? My father——?”
“Bah! Your father! Your vagabond, ne’er-do-weel scamp of a father! He’s a scandal to the family, your father. He should never have been born.”
The girl
