He was not long in
perceiving that her father was the beginning and end of all
her ideas--her one standard of perfection, the one medium
through which, small as she was, she was learning to look out
on and estimate the world, and receiving her first impressions
of life. She had no mother, she said, in answer to Graham's
inquiries. _Maman_ had died when she was quite a little baby;
and though she seemed to have some dim faint recollection of
having once lived in a cottage in the country, with a woman to
take care of her, everything else referred to her father, from
her first, vague floating memories to the time when she could
date them as distinct and well-defined, facts. She had once
had a nurse, she said, --a long time ago that was, when she was
little--but papa did not like her, and so she went away; and
now she was too big for one. Papa did everything for her, it
appeared, from putting her to sleep at night, when
Mademoiselle was disposed to be wakeful, to nursing her when
she was ill, taking her to fetes on grand holidays, buying her
pretty things, walking with her, teaching her dancing, and
singing, and reading; and she loved him so much--ah! so much!
Indeed, in all the world, the child had but one object for a
child's boundless powers of trust and love and veneration, and
that one was her father.
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