Home, where I lived for nearly twenty-seven years, all of which now seem such happy years. “God do so unto me and more also,” as the old Hebrews used to say, if ever I forget Rockmount, my peaceful maiden-home!
It looked so pretty that night, with the sunset colouring its old walls, and its terrace-walk, where papa was walking to and fro, bareheaded, the rosy light falling like a glory upon his long white hair. To think of him thus pacing his garden, year after year, each year growing older and feebler, and I never seeing him, perhaps never hearing from him; either not coming back at all, or returning after a lapse of years to find nothing left to me but my father's grave!
The conflict was very terrible; nor would Max himself have wished it less. They who do not love their own flesh and blood, with whom they have lived ever since they were born, how can they know what any love is?
We heard papa call us:—“Come in, you girls! The sun is down, and the dews are falling.” Penelope put her hand softly on my head. “Hush, child, hush! Steal into your own room, and quiet yourself. I will go and explain things to your father.”
I was sure she must have done it in the best and gentlest way; Penelope does everything so wisely and gently now; but when she came to look for me, I knew, before she said a word, that it had been done in vain.
“Dora, you must go yourself and reason with him. But take heed what you say and what you do. There is hardly a man on this earth for whom it is worth forsaking a happy home and a good father.”
And truly, if I had ever had the least doubt of Max, or of our love for one another; if I had not felt as it were already married to him, who had no tie in the whole wide world but me—I never could have nerved myself to say what I did say to my father. If, in the lightest word, it was unjust, unloving or undutiful—may God forgive me, for I never meant it! My heart was breaking almost—but I only wanted to hold fast to the right, as I saw it, and as, so seeing it, I could not but act.
“So, I understand you wish to leave your father?”
“Papa!—papa!”
“Do not argue the point. I thought that folly was all over now. It must be over. Be a good girl, and forget it. There!”