“What have I done?” murmured Theresa.
“You are wasting your thoughts upon a stranger, my dear,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. You are not so much to blame for this, because you are purely a child of Nature, but it will be best if Sir Harold Annesley is left more to himself.”
“Oh, father, must this be?” cried Theresa. “Must I not speak to him again? Must I not listen to his reading while I work? It is like heaven to me! I never understood the meaning of life until he came here!”
She rocked herself to and fro bitterly.
“I wish that he had never crossed our path,” he returned, harshly. “You are in love with this man!”
He was very angry—as much with himself and Sir Harold as with his daughter—and left the room determined to speak to the baronet.
He found him in the summer arbor, reading and smoking as usual, the happy light of contentment in his blue eyes.
“Where is Theresa?” he asked. “I have been reading Tennyson’s ‘Maud,’ and I want Theresa to hear it. Much of the beautiful poem seems to be but an echo. I feel that I have known these lines before:
“Go not, happy day,
From the shining fields;