At sight of her good M. Legros' grief swept over him with renewed force. Once more he sank into a chair, and buried his face in his hands whilst a moan of painful soul-agony escaped his lips.
"The child!—the child! My God how to tell her!"
But Rose Marie's voice came quite clear and distinct, there was no catch in her throat, nor tremor in the gentle tones as she said quietly:
"Nay! my dear father, an there is aught to tell—milor will best know how to say it to me."
CHAPTER XXVI
As the dawn loves the sunlight, I love thee.
—Swinburne.
Papa Legros at first had been too dazed to protest. Truly his loving heart had been for hours on the rack at thought of the awful task which lay before him—the opening of his child's eyes to the monstrous trick played upon her by the man to whom her innocent heart had turned in perfect love and in perfect trust. He, the father, who worshipped this dainty, delicately-nurtured daughter, who had spent the past twenty years of an arduous life in trying to smooth away every unevenness from the child's pathway of life, now suddenly saw himself like unto the scarlet-clad executioner, rope and branding irons in hand, forced to bind his beloved one on the rack, and himself to apply the searing torture of sorrow and of shame to her soul.