“Cora,” I said, in a whisper, parting the hair from her forehead, and kissing it with affection deeper than I had ever known before, and yet with a shudder, for I knew that his lips had touched that white brow last, and spite of the knowledge, felt in my soul that he was dear to me even then, traitor and villain as he was, “Cora, love, come home, the little house is desolate without you; your father”——
“Don’t, oh, don’t; why will you speak that name so cruelly? I cannot bear it,” she cried, struggling in my arms; “but—but tell me how he is,” she added, clinging closer and closer, that I might not look in her face.
“Ill, Cora, ill, and pining to death for the sight of his child.”
Her head fell heavily on my shoulder, and she gasped out, “No, no, he is not ill.”
I would not spare her one pang, she must feel all the desolation that had fallen on her good parent, or my errand would fail.
“Yes, ill, Cora, helpless—stricken down like a child. I left him in the old chair—that by which you and I stood to comfort him on the day of your mother’s funeral; that was a mournful time, Cora, but the day when you left him, think what it must have been—think of that noble man, calling in anguish for his living child, and she silent as the dead—gone not into the sweet peace of the grave, but”——
“Hold! oh, Zana, Zana! you are killing me—killing me, I say!”
She broke from my arms, and pushed back the hair from her face with both hands as she spoke; then, as her eyes met mine, full of sorrowful reproach and moist with compassion, she let the hair sweep down, and clasping those two dimpled hands over her eyes, wept till her sobs filled the room.
“Will you leave this bad man and go back to your father, Cora?” I said, circling her waist with my arms again.
“He is not bad—I cannot—I cannot leave him. It is of no use asking me. It would kill him; oh, Zana, Zana! don’t call him bad—he is so kind, he loves me so much!”