hearing this?

AGNES. I thought it almost certain that you would not.

[After a moment's irresolution, GERTRUDE returns, and stands by the
settee.]

GERTRUDE. I can hardly believe you.

AGNES. I should like you to hear more than just the bare fact.

GETRUDE. [Drumming on the back of the settee.] Why don't you tell me
more?

AGNES. You were going, you know.

GERTRUDE. [Sitting.] I won't go quite like that. Please tell me.

AGNES. [Calmly.] Well--did you ever read of John Thorold--"Jack
Thorold, the demagogue?" [GERTRUDE shakes her head.] I daresay not.
John Thorold, once a schoolmaster, was my father. In my time he used to
write for the two or three, so-called, inflammatory journals, and hold
forth in small lecture-halls, occasionally even from the top of a
wooden stool in the Park, upon trade and labour questions, division of
wealth, and the rest of it. He believed in nothing that people who go
to church are credited with believing in, Mrs. Thorpe; his scheme for
the readjustment of things was Force; his pet doctrine, the ultimate
healthy healing that follows the surgery of Revolution. But to me he
was the gentlest creature imaginable; and I was very fond of him, in
spite of his--as I then thought--strange ideas. Strange ideas! Ha!