"I am to be your guardian, Louise. Does that please you?"
Blythe, leaning back in the deep chair, did not take his eyes from the murmuring logs. Louise, chin still in palm, turned to look at him calmly. Then she gazed back into the fire.
"Yes," she replied, no surprise in her tone. Perhaps, she thought whimsically, the dancing, leaping flames had hypnotized her. But she was not surprised. She was, instead, swept by a surge of deep gladness. "You have a letter from my father?"
"Two," said Blythe. "One of them is for you."
She moved her little stool close to his chair and he handed her the packet. The letter for her was under cover of the letter addressed to Blythe. Louise studied, in the fire's glow, the bold, clear address on the envelope. It was the first time she had ever seen her father's handwriting. Her eyes became slightly suffused at that thought. Her letter dropped out of the larger envelope.
"If you care to, read the one addressed to me first, Louise," said Blythe.
Louise, turning a bit the better to catch the fire's glow, read her father's letter addressed to Blythe—as far as she could read it. She was nearly at the end when her unshed tears blinded her. Blythe's hand, which she then felt, without surprise, softly clasping both of her own as they rested in her lap, felt very cool and soothing to her.
After a while, nothing having been said by either, she broke the envelope and read her father's letter to her. It was not a long letter, but it took her a long time to read it; the tears would blot out the words, try as she would to crowd them back.
Her father's letter to Blythe was couched in the tone a man assumes in addressing his lawyer who also is his friend. It bore the postmark of Lahaina, Island of Maui, Hawaii—George Treharne's sugar plantations were on that island of the Hawaiian group. The letter concerned Louise wholly. He was tied to his plantations, owing to labor troubles with the Japanese, and there was no possibility of his visiting the States for some time. He had been surprised to hear that Louise had left school. She was now a woman grown. He had looked forward to the time when, he hoped, she might feel an impulse to come to him. If that time had not yet come he trusted implicitly to Blythe to see that she should be properly bestowed, placed in a fitting environment, and shielded from baneful influences. He knew that Blythe, the young partner of his old lawyer, now dead, would not fail him in this. He desired that Blythe should apply immediately for a court order appointing him his daughter's legal guardian. He inclosed the necessary papers for the accomplishment of that purpose. He was eager to see his daughter, and hoped to see her within a year. In the meantime he confidently committed her to Blythe's watchful guardianship.
His letter to Louise bespoke a deep and solicitous affection. He told her of Blythe, adverting to him in terms of praise as a man of exalted honor ("Poor father! as if I did not know that," thought Louise, when she came to that passage), and beseeching her to follow Blythe's advice in all matters in which his large experience would be invaluable to her. He added that he felt that she would not find Blythe's suggestions irksome. He inclosed a draft on a Honolulu bank for five thousand dollars, which would suffice for her needs until she heard from him again. He hoped to see her within a year. And he was hoping that she would be glad to see her "always-affectionate father, George Treharne."