“Oh, my father—”
“Hush, hush, no word like that, I say!” repeated Hollis Elverton, in a sepulchral voice.
But his daughter, pale as death, trembled like a leaf, and nearly fainting with excessive agitation, had entirely lost her self-possession.
She either did not hear or did not understand his strange words.
Extending her arms towards him with a look of imploring affection, and in a voice of thrilling passion, she cried:
“Father! oh father! will you not embrace your child?”
The tall figure of the man shook as a tree shaken by the wind, but he averted his face, and threw his hand towards her with a repelling gesture.
She dropped her arms with a look of shame, sorrow and wonder, murmuring:
“Never since I lived have I been pressed to my mother’s bosom, or received a mother’s kiss, or known a mother’s love. And the father for whose presence my heart has longed through all the years of my lonely youth—the father whom my love has followed through all the years of his long exile—now, in the first moments of our meeting, repulses his child and turns away! Oh, father!” she exclaimed, in passionate earnestness, “what have I done that both my parents should hate me!”
“You have done nothing wrong, nor do we hate you, poor girl!” replied Elverton, in an agitated voice.