And again the silence and the smoking and the pain.
"He's out to-night--where, I don't know. I don't want to know--I'm afraid to know!"
There was something wild, appealing and pathetic in this cry wrung from a father's heart. Elizabeth had looked up quickly, her own heart aching with pity. She recalled how he had said:
"Your mother--she doesn't understand; I don't know that I want her to; she idolizes the boy; she thinks he can't do wrong."
And then Elizabeth had slipped her arm about his neck, and, leaning over, had placed her cheek against his; her tears had come, and she had felt that his tears had come; he had patted her hand. They had sat thus for a long while.
"Poor boy!" Ward had said again. "He's only making trouble for himself. I'd like to help him, but somehow, Bess, I can't get next to him; when I try to talk to him, when I try to be confidential and all that--something comes between us, and I can't say it right. I can't talk to him as I could to any other man. I don't know why it is; I sometimes think that it's all my fault, that I haven't reared him right, that I haven't done my duty by him, and yet, God knows, I've tried!"
"Oh, papa," she had replied protestingly, "you mustn't blame yourself--you've done everything."
"He's really a good boy," Ward had gone on irrelevantly, ignoring himself in his large, unselfish thought for his son. "He's kind and generous, and he means well enough--and--and--I think he likes me."
This had touched her to the quick, and she had wept softly, stroking her father's cheek.
"Can't you--couldn't you--" he began. "Do you think you could talk to him, Bess?"