Presently he stops close to her.
"I suppose there is some orthodox way of breaking bad news," he says, "but I never learned it. Ruth, your father is dead."
The girl shrinks back, and puts her hand to her forehead in a dazed, pitiful fashion.
"Not dead!" she says, imploringly, as though her contrition could bring him back to life. "Not altogether gone beyond recall. Sick, perhaps,—nay, dying,—but not dead!"
"Yes, he is dead," says Horace, though more gently. "He died a week ago."
A terrible silence falls upon the room. Presently, alarmed at her unnatural calm, he lays his hand upon her shoulder to rouse her.
"There is no use in fretting over what cannot be recalled," he says, quickly, though still in his gentler tone. "And there are other things I must speak to you about to-night. My remaining time in this country is short, and I want you to understand the arrangements I have made for your comfort before leaving you."
"You will leave me?" cries she, sharply. A dagger seems to have reached and pierced her heart. Falling upon her knees before him, she clasps him, and whispers, in a voice that has grown feeble through the intensity of her emotion, "Horace, do not forsake me. Think of all the past, and do not let the end be separation. What can I do? Where can I go?—with no home, no aim in life! Have pity! My father is dead; my friends, too, are dead to me. In all this wide miserable world I have only you!"
"Only me!" he echoes, with a short bitter laugh. "A prize, surely. You don't know what folly you are talking. I give you a chance of escape from me,—an honorable chance, where a new home and new friends await you."
"I want no friends, no home." (She is still clinging to his knees, with her white earnest face uplifted to his.) "Let me be your slave,—anything; but do not part from me. I cannot live without you now. It is only death you offer me."