"He was a valet; but if you would only close your eyes I think you would go to sleep."
"Do you think so? I don't."
His eyes showed more awake than ever; there was a hint of a smile on the handsome old face.
Still there was silence for full five minutes, and Marrion was just about to make further suggestion of sleep when once more the voice rose--
"Will you please give me my snuff-box?--it is under my pillow somewhere."
She drew it out. A plain gold box with--her startled eyes caught the old face--
"Yes!" he said, and his voice had a jeer in it. "'P.P.,' as you see. That is my name. So you are Marrion Sim's child--and I suppose mine. Queer, isn't it, how these old stories crop up when one had almost forgotten them?" He scanned her face narrowly. "Now you are angry. Why should you be? Your mother was my wife, I suppose. At least, I hadn't any other then. I have sons now"--his voice softened as he spoke--"yes, sons to come after me when I am gone, as I shall be soon, for that gay doctor of yours can't conquer Fate; and it is Fate that has brought me here!"
He lay looking at her with a certain kindly curiosity, while she, startled out of herself, tried to realise that this was her father--the father she had condemned and despised all her life.
It seemed almost as if he saw into her thoughts, for his next words touched them.
"Perhaps it was cruel to leave her as I did; but I had no choice. If you have anything belonging to us in you, you'll understand what the call of the master means. And young Muir was never my master. He befriended me, helped me to escape Siberia; but the other---- There's a perfect passion of loyalty in our family which you may or may not understand." He paused and a shiver of assent ran through Marrion.