Chapter 1 - Page 2

which his daughter had done her share, and indeed,
as she grew more competent and he weaker and older, more than her
share. He had had to combine health-hunting with pleasure-seeking;
and, being very irritable and fastidious, had schooled her in
self-control and endurance by harder lessons than those which had
made her acquainted with the works of Greek and German philosophers
long before she understood the English into which she translated
them.

When Lydia was in her twenty-first year her father's health failed
seriously. He became more dependent on her; and she anticipated that
he would also become more exacting in his demands on her time. The
contrary occurred. One day, at Naples, she had arranged to go riding
with an English party that was staying there. Shortly before the
appointed hour he asked her to make a translation of a long extract
from Lessing. Lydia, in whom self-questionings as to the justice of
her father's yoke had been for some time stirring, paused
thoughtfully for perhaps two seconds before she consented. Carew
said nothing, but he presently intercepted a servant who was bearing
an apology to the English party, read the note, and went back to his
daughter, who was already busy at Lessing.

"Lydia," he said, with a certain hesitation, which she would have
ascribed to shyness had that been at all credible of her father when
addressing her, "I wish you never to postpone your business to
literary trifling."

She looked at him with the vague fear that accompanies a new and
doubtful experience; and he, dissatisfied with his way of putting
the case, added, "It is of greater importance that you should enjoy
yourself for an hour than that my book should be advanced. Far
greater!"

Lydia, after some consideration, put down her pen and said, "I shall
not enjoy riding if there is anything else left undone."

"I shall not enjoy your writing if your excursion is given up for
it," he said. "I prefer your going."

Lydia obeyed silently. An odd thought struck her that she might end
the matter gracefully by kissing him. But as they were unaccustomed
to make demonstrations of this kind, nothing came of the impulse.
She spent the day on horseback, reconsidered her late rebellious
thoughts, and made the translation in the evening.

Thenceforth Lydia had a growing sense of the power she had
unwittingly been acquiring during her long subordination. Timidly at
first, and more boldly as she became used to dispense with the
parental leading-strings, she began to follow her own bent in
selecting subjects for study, and even to defend certain recent
developments of art against her father's conservatism. He