“Renalt,” said my father, presently; “never speak of her; never mention her by that name. She passed and left me what I am. I closed the mill and shut its door and that of my heart to every genial influence that might help it to forget. I had no wish to forget. In silence and solitariness I fed upon myself till I became like to a madman. Then I roused and went abroad more, for I had a mission of search to attend to.”
“You never found him?”
The words came to my lips instinctively. How could I fail to interpret that part, at least, of the miserable secret?
“To this day—never.”
He answered preoccupied—suddenly heedless of my assurance in so speaking. A new light had come to his face—an unfamiliar one. I could have called it almost the reflection of cunning—vanity—a self-complacent smugness of retrospect.
“But I found something else,” he cried, with a twitching smirk.
“What was that?”
He leaned forward in a listening attitude.
“Hush!” he murmured. “Was that a noise in the house?”
“I heard nothing, dad.”