“But why have you come here? I did not ask it—I did not want it,” she answered, her eyes filling, and her sweet lips quivering.
“I came to ask—to entreat—oh, Cora, come back, come back to your poor father, or he will die.”
“I know it—I know that he will die without me; but how can I go? what can I do?”
“Go home,” I answered imperatively; “why, oh, Cora Clark, why did you leave us?”
“Don’t ask me—don’t speak to me on this subject; I will not be questioned,” with a gleam of temper in her blue eyes, and a willful pout of the lips, the remnants of her wayward infancy, “you have no right to come here, Zana—none in the world. Oh, Zana, he will be so angry.”
Something of the old love was in her voice. Encouraged by it, I went and softly encircled her shrinking form in my arms, leaning my wet cheeks against the golden thickness of her hair.
“Cora, dear, is it your husband that you speak of?” I said, with a heart that trembled more than my voice.
She threw herself on my bosom, clasping me close in her shaking arms.
“Oh, Zana! Zana!”
I understood it all, and the heart, but an instant before trembling with hope, lay heavy and still in my bosom.