"I have watched her from infancy, and I know her purity. I pray that she may be spared from life's hard trials; but they may come to her, as they come to most of us. They may come to her undeservedly, and through no fault of hers; and if they do, and if, like Imogen, she has to pass through the fire, she will, like Imogen, come out unscathed."
Some hidden fear, some doubt which he was loth to express more plainly, prompted the old man's words. With an effort, he returned to his first theme.
"What else could I do? There was no other way of paying the debt. I have a small pittance of my own, from which not a shilling can be spared; our necessities demand it all. And when I think, as I do often, that this dear child, tender as she is, has been and is working to wipe out, as far as is humanly possible, the disgrace entailed upon us by her father's crime, I love her the more dearly for it."
He went to the mantelshelf, where the portraits of Lily hung, and gazed at them long and lovingly.
"To her as to others," he said softly, "life's troubles may come. To her may come, one day, the sweet and bitter experience of love. When it does, I pray to God that she may give her heart to a man who will be worthy of her--to one who holds not lightly, as is unhappily too much the fashion now, the sacred duties of life." The prescience of a coming trouble weighed heavily upon the old man, and his voice grew mournful under its influence. "In a few years I shall have lived my span, Felix; I may be called any day. Should the call come soon, and suddenly, who will protect my darling when I am gone?"
Felix drew nearer to the old man in sympathy, but dared not trust himself to speak.
"I speak to you," continued the old man, "out of my full heart, Felix, for I have faith in you, and believe that I can trust you. It relieves me to confide in you; strange as it may sound to you, you are the only person I know to whom I would say what I am saying now--you are the only person in whom I can repose this confidence, lame and incomplete as you will find it to be."
"Your granddaughter, sir—" suggested Felix.
"The fears that oppress me are on her account," interrupted the old man, "and I dare not at present speak to her of them; they would necessarily suggest doubts which would bring great grief to her."
"Her brother, sir, Alfred--could you not confide in him?"