"Preposterous or not," answered Medland, "half the people in the place will let her know the difference. I may agree with you—God knows how I should like to be able to!—but there's no blinking the fact. Well, I must tell her."
He recollected telling the same story to the other woman he loved, and he shrank in sudden dread, lest his daughter should say what Alicia had said, "To me it is—horrible!" The words echoed in his brain. "Ah, I can't speak of it," she had cried, and the gesture of her hand as she repelled him lived before his eyes again. Surely Daisy would not do that to him!
"I should be like Lear—without a grievance,"
he said to himself, with a wry smile. "The very height of tragedy!"
It was near midnight before he put away his work. Norburn had left him alone two hours before, and he rose now, laid down his pipe, and went to look for his daughter in her little sitting-room. His heart was very heavy; he must make her understand now why a man who made love to her should be hastily sent away by his friends, what her father had condemned her to, what manner of man he was; he must seem to destroy or impair the perfect sweetness of memory wherein she held her mother.
He opened the door softly. She was sitting in a large armchair, over a little bit of bright fire; save for gleams suddenly coming and going, as a coal blazed and died down again, the room was in darkness. He walked up to her and knelt by the chair, his head almost on a level with hers.
"Well, Daisy, what are you doing?"
She put out a hand and laid it on his with a gentle pressure.
"I'm thinking," she said. "Do you want a light?"
"No, I like it dark best—best for what I have to say."