She shook her head: 

“If you will excuse me, I prefer to stand.”

In turning, so as to confront her fully, his elbow struck from the table, a bronze paper-weight which rolled just beyond his reach.  Instinctively she stooped to pick it up, and in restoring it, her fingers touched his.  Leaning suddenly forward he grasped her wrists ere she was aware of his intention, and drew her in front of him.

“Pardon me; but I want a good look at you.”

His keen merciless eyes searched every feature, and he deliberately lifted and examined the exquisitely shaped strong, white hands, the dainty nails, and delicately rounded wrists with their violet tracery of veins.  It cost her an effort, to abstain from wrenching herself free; but her mother’s caution:  “So much depends on the impression you make upon father,” girded her to submit to his critical inspection.

A grim smile crossed his face, as he watched her.

“Blood often doubles, like a fox; sometimes ‘crops back,’ but never lies.  You can’t play out your role of pauper; and you don’t look a probable outcome of destitution and hard work.  Your hands would fit much better in a metope of the Elgin Marbles, than in a wash-tub, or a bake-oven.”

Drawing away quickly, she put them behind her, and felt her palms tingle.

“It is expected I should believe that for some time past, you have provided for your own, and your mother’s wants.  In what way?”

“By coloring photographs; by furnishing designs for Christmas and Easter cards, and occasionally (not often), by selling drawings used for decorating china, and wallpaper.  At one time, I had regular pay for singing in a choir, but diphtheria injured my throat, and when I partly recovered my voice, the situation had been given to another person.”

“I am informed also that before long, you intend to astonish the world with a wonderful picture, which shall distance such laggards as Troyon, Dore, and Ary Scheffer?”

She was looking, not at him, but out through the glass door, at the glowing western sky, where distant pine trees printed their silhouettes.  Now her gaze came back to his face, and he noted a faint quiver in her full throat.

“If God will mercifully spare my mother to me, my loftiest and holiest ambition shall be to distance the wolfish cares and woes that have hunted her. ever since she became a widow.  Any and all honest labor that can contribute to her comfort, will be welcome and sweet to me.”

“The laws of heredity must be occult and complex.  The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that which she showed me.”

“When I do, may God eternally forsake me!”

A brief silence ensued, and the old man drummed on the table, with the fingers of his right hand.