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Page 22
"Sixty-two."
"Did he drink?"
"No."
"Did he play cards?"
"Yes."
"Poker?"
"Yes, and several other games."
"Was he as fond of them as of croquet?"
"No; nothing pleased him as croquet did--nothing, unless it were
chess."
"Hum! Do you play chess?"
"Yes; I played a good deal with father."
"What kind of a game did he play?"
"I do not understand you. He played a good game; my father did not
enjoy doing anything that he could not do well."
"I mean to ask if his positions were steadily sustained--or if,
on the other hand, his manoeuvres were swift, and what you might
call brilliant."
"I think you would call them brilliant."
"Hum! How old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
"Tell me your relations with your father."
"We were most constant companions. My mother--she and my father
--they were not altogether companionable--in short, they were
ill-mated, and, being wise enough to find it out, and having no
desire to longer embitter each other's lives, they agreed to
separate when I was only four. They parted without the slightest
ill-feeling, and I remained with father. He was very fond of me,
and would permit no one else to teach me. At seven I was drawing
and painting under his guidance. At eight the violin was put into
my hands and my studies in voice began. In the meantime father was
most careful not to neglect my physical training; he taught me the
use of Indian clubs, and how to walk easily. At eight I could
walk four miles an hour without fatigue. The neighbours used to
urge that I be put to school, but my father would reply--many a
time I have heard him say it--'a child's brain is like a flower
that blossoms in perceptions and goes to seed in abstractions.
Correct concepts are the raw material of reason. Every desk in
your school is an intellectual loom which is expected to weave a
sound fabric out of rotten raw material. While your children are
wasting their fibre in memorising the antique errors of classical
thought my child is being fitted to perceive new truths for herself.'
It is needless to say his friends considered these views altogether
too radical. But for all that I was never sent to school. My
father's library was always at my disposal, and I was taught how
to use it. We were constantly together, and grew so into each
other's lives that "--but her voice failed her, and her eyes
moistened. Maitland, though he apparently did not notice her
emotion, so busy was he in making notes, quickly put a question
which diverted her attention.
"Your father seemed last night to have a presentiment of some
impending calamity. Was this a common experience?"
"Of late, yes. He has told me some six or seven times of dreaming
the same dreams--a dream in which some assassin struck him out of
the darkness." "Did you at any of these times notice anything
which might now lead you to believe this fancied repetition was the
result of any mental malady?"
"No."
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