A secret conviction haunted me that were we to go abroad, we should there meet Madame, which to me was like meeting my evil genius.
I have said more than once that my father was an odd man; and the reader will, by this time, have seen that there was much about him not easily understood.

I often wonder whether, if he had been franker, I should have found him less odd than I supposed, or more odd still.

Things that moved me profoundly did not apparently affect him at all.

The departure of Madame, under the circumstances which attended it, appeared to my childish mind an event of the vastest importance.

No one was indifferent to the occurrence in the house but its master.