“‘There, hold up your head,’ I said, ‘and look at me. Now tell me frankly, did you ever see such a weak, stupid old man in your life?’
“‘I like weak, stupid old men,’ she said archly; and her eyes twinkled with merriment, and then softened with the tears that stole into them.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘because you can tyrannise over them, and do what you please with them, and make them your slaves like you do me. A pretty rig I’ve been running this last two months to find a place you like—just as if Bryanston Square wouldn’t do. I tell you what, my lady, you’ll have to take pains to make me comfortable down there, for I shall be as dull and as heavy as lead.’
“‘No, you will not, pa dear,’ she said, laughing, and then laying her cheek to mine. ‘I am so glad. You’ve made me so happy, for I was very tired of London.’
“I did not answer, but sat looking down on the smooth peachy cheek that one of my hands would keep stroking, and at the long yellow hair that hung down over the shoulders in waves, and, in spite of myself, a sigh escaped my lips.
“Ruth—Cobweb, as I always called her, because she was so soft and downy—started up, gazing earnestly in my face, and then kissed me very, very fondly.
“‘Don’t think about the past, dear father,’ she said softly—she always called me father when she was serious.
“‘Can’t help it, child,’ I said mournfully; and then, seeing the tears gather in her eyes, I tried to be cheerful, and smiled as I added, ‘I have the future as well as the past to make me sad, my dear.’
“She looked at me wonderingly, but did not speak, and I sat there holding her little hand to my heart as I thought of the past, and how ten years before, just as business was beginning to prosper with me, I was left alone with a little fair-haired girl of eight, who found it so hard to believe that her mother had been taken away never to return, only to live in our memories. And I thought, too, of how the years had fled away, and I had become a wealthy man, whose sole thought had been of the child I had seen grow up to maidenhood, making a very idol of her, yielding to her every whim, and doing the most I could to spoil one who never would be spoiled. For, with all the accomplishments I had lavished upon her, Ruth had grown up to be a notable little housewife, who disgusted our cooks by insisting upon going down into the kitchen and making my favourite puddings and tarts with her own hands, and generally behaving in what the servants called an unladylike way.
“And then I thought of my other sorrow—the future—and pictured, with an agony I cannot describe, the day when I should have to resign my claims to another, and be left alone, a desolate, broken old man.