his daughter in amazement.

"Yes, I do;" answered Bee, wrought up to such a pitch that she forgot
the respect and deference due her father. If the mere mention of her
cousin's name had such influence upon him, she would let him know how
she felt about it; so she continued wrathfully: "You and Aunt Annie, and
everybody, are fond of talking about the cultivation of the mind and
spirit being above beauty, but you don't practice what you preach. Look
at what you have been saying, and then think of how you have treated
me."

"Why, why," stammered Doctor Raymond, so surprised by this vehement
outburst that he scarcely knew what to say.

"You were away ten long, long years," went on Beatrice, almost beside
herself with passion; all her pent-up unhappiness clamoring for
utterance. "I was just crazy for you to come home. Other girls had their
fathers and I wanted mine too. When you wrote that you were coming I was
happy; as happy as a bird. You had written that you wished my mind
cultivated, and I studied hard to please you. I knew that you were a
learned man, and I wanted to be able to talk to you intelligently. You
wanted me to learn to be a good housekeeper, and that, too, I studied. I
have tried to do everything that you wished me to. You say that you are
disappointed in me. How do you think that I feel about you? You will
have nothing to say to me because I am not Adele. You wanted her for
your daughter, and you can't get over it because she isn't. In your last
letter to me you said that you thought that I must have a mind of
uncommon intelligence. Have I? You have not troubled to find out. What
kind of a disposition have I? You don't know. And why? Just because I
don't happen to be pretty. 'Sweet disposition and well informed mind'
are all very well to talk about, but when it comes right down to real
truth a girl might as well be dead if she isn't pretty."

"You are giving me a terrible arraignment, Beatrice," observed her
father gravely. "Really, I--"

"Isn't it all true?" demanded Bee with startling directness.

"I think that probably some of it is," admitted Doctor Raymond
guardedly. "The discussion of beauty and non-beauty we will not prolong
because we could come to no satisfactory conclusion on the matter. It is
an old, old question. Beauty undoubtedly has its influence upon us all;
chiefly, perhaps, because it at once attracts the attention. After all,
it is but a free gift of nature accorded to its possessor