“No; you wouldn’t see, of course. Yes; it’s my doctrine—in theory. I believe it, as people believe in Christianity. I should be equally loath to see anybody doubt it, or practice it. Ah, I’m a fool! Besides, I was born in Kentucky. And I’m sixty-seven years old.”
He shut the door behind him with emphasis.
He was on his way to Bellevue to see Lydia. Knowing her tender heart, he had expected to see her drowned in grief over her father’s death. Her dry-eyed quiet made him uneasy. That morning, he found her holding Ariadne on her knees and telling her in a self-possessed, low tone, which did not tremble, some stories of “when grandfather was a little boy.”
“I don’t want her to grow up without knowing something of my father,” she explained to the doctor.
Her godfather laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t keep the tears back so, Lydia,” he implored.
She gave him as great a shock of surprise as her mother had done.
“If I could cry,” she said quietly, “it would be because I feel so little sorrow. I do not miss my father at all—or hardly at all.”
The doctor caught at his chair and stared.
“How should I?” she went on drearily. “I almost never saw him. I never spoke to him about anything that really mattered. I never let him know me—or anything I really felt.”
“What are you talking about?” cried the doctor. “You always lived at home.”