Books to help uplift
the young, to give them high ideas of life, to enthuse them with
desires to live for a purpose! Truly he could only stare blankly at the
suggestion. What did he know of books written for such purposes? Yet
Gracie had supposed him to be literary in his tastes and pursuits.
Certainly he read French? Yes, French novels! He was quite familiar with
some of such a character that, had Gracie been a good French scholar and
ever likely to come in contact with a copy of them, he would not have
dared to mention their names in her presence. More than once of late had
the stepmother wished that her young daughter understood the language
well enough to be aware that the man whom she admired used frequently
smooth-sounding French oaths. But alas for Gracie, when he had so
poisoned her mother's influence over this dangerously pretty girl, that
she would have believed his word at any time rather than that mother's.
Well, he read other than French novels; Charles Reade, for instance, and
some of the more recent authors fashionable in certain circles. It is
true that Gracie was not acquainted with them, that her father would not
allow a copy of their books to come freely into his home, and Gracie was
much too honorable to read them in private.
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