"Unhappy girl!" cried Sacqueville-Danglars, becoming pale; for he knew by long experience that he had encountered an object as immovable as a drunken hobbit or the opinion of a political troll.
"Unhappy?" repeated Éowénie. "Unhappy? Not in the least, and the expression strikes me as highly theatrical and affected. Au contraire, happy; for what, I ask, is lacking me? The world finds me beautiful, and therefore I am welcome wherever I go; I like being welcome. I am rich, for you possess one of the finest fortunes in Arnor, and I am an only child, for they say you and Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars only had conjugal relations once, and that by accident." (Sacqueville-Danglars blushed.) "You are not as stubborn as the fathers of Nettopolis, who disinherit children for not wedding the leading usenettiers and conceiving yet more usenettiers, that the same flame war might endure in eternal; and the law does not give you the right to do so if you wished, or, indeed, to constrain me to wed monsieur so and so. So: I, born in the body of a demoiselle, have beauty, spirit, talent, and riches at least the match of yours! That is happiness, monsieur!"
The banker, seeing his daughter smiling and proud to the point of insolence, could not repress a movement of brutality; but only one. Under the questioning smile of his daughter, he returned to prudence and smiled in turn. "You are right except for one thing," he said. "I will leave you to guess what that is when I have had my turn to speak."
Éowénie bowed, not as a submissive daughter who listens, but as an adversary who waits.
