He looked as he was bidden. He, the man who had not always been a recluse, the whilom man of the world who in older years had taken study as a hobby, the man of bygone pleasures, appraised her ripe woman’s beauty with rapid discrimination. Then into the father’s eyes there sprang a gleam of something like pride—pride of such a daughter—a light of remembrance, a struggling tenderness. The next moment the worn lids fell and the old man stood ashamed:
“I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said, gravely, and sank into his chair.
She came round and looked down at him a moment smiling.
“You never heard me walk all about the room,” she said, “I have a light tread. And I’ll always wear stuff dresses here.” Then, more coaxingly: “I don’t think you’ll find me much in the way, father. I’ve got good eyes, I am remarkably intelligent”—she paused a second and, thrusting out her hands under his brooding gaze, added with a soft laugh: “And you know I’ve steady hands!”
He stared at the pretty white things. Faintly he murmured:
“But I’m a mass of selfishness!”
“Then I’ll be the more useful to you!” she cried gaily and laid first her cool, young cheek, then her warm, young lips upon his forehead.
The sap was not yet dead in the old branch, after all. Master Simon’s body had not become the mere thinking machine he fain would have made it. There was blood enough still in his old veins to answer to the call of its own. Memories, tender, remorseful, all human, were still lurking in forgotten corners of a brain consecrated, he fancied, wholly to Science; memories which now awoke and clamoured. Slowly he stretched out his hand and touched his daughter’s cheek.
“Poor child!”
Ellinor Marvel now drew back quietly. Master Simon passed a finger across his eyes and muttered that their light was getting dim.