"I am sorry if it was wrong," he repeated, turning his glance now upon Richard Ordway.
"Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? Have you heard him spoken of by decent people since you have been in Botetourt?" asked the old man sternly.
"I have heard little of him," answered Daniel, "and that little was far from good. We are sorry, Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if we can help it."
"It has happened before," said Lydia, lifting her head from Dick's arm, where it had lain. "It was then that I forbade her to see him alone."
"I did not know," responded Daniel, "but she will do as you wish hereafter. Will you not, Alice?"
"How does it concern them? What have they to do with me?" demanded Alice, turning in his arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry look, "they have never cared for me—they have always preferred Dick—always, even when I was a little child."
He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping face again on Dick's shoulder. "You are unjust to your mother, Alice," he said gravely, "she has loved you always, and I have loved you."
"Oh, you are different—I would die for you!" she exclaimed passionately, as she wept on his breast.
While he stood there holding her in his arms, it seemed to him that he could feel like an electric current the wave of feeling which had swept Alice and himself together. The inheritance which was his had descended to her also with its keen joys and its sharp anguish. Even the road which he had travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon which her brave young feet were now set. Not his alone, but his child's also, was this mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion.
"If you will leave me alone with her, I think I can make her understand what you wish," he said, lifting his eyes from the dark head on his breast to Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him with her pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. "She is like me," he added abruptly, "in so many ways."