'
'Then you are very unjust. I am not a child, and there's nothing
wrong in my asking you why home is made a place of misery,
instead of being what home ought to be.'
'You prove that you are a child, in asking for explanations which
ought to be clear enough to you.'
'You mean that mother is to blame for everything?'
'The subject is no fit one to be discussed between a father and
his daughter. If you cannot see the impropriety of it, be so good
as to go away and reflect, and leave me to my occupations.'
Marian came to a pause. But she knew that his rebuke was mere
unworthy evasion; she saw that her father could not meet her
look, and this perception of shame in him impelled her to finish
what she had begun.
'I will say nothing of mother, then, but speak only for myself. I
suffer too much from your unkindness; you ask too much
endurance.'
'You mean that I exact too much work from you?' asked her father,
with a look which might have been directed to a recalcitrant
clerk.
'No. But that you make the conditions of my work too hard. I live
in constant fear of your anger.
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