“Father, dear father!” she whispered, as her arms tightened around him.
“Claire, my child—my child!”
“Yes,” she said, as she seemed to be growing stronger and more firm; “your child—not your judge. Father, I see my duty clearly now. Your help and comfort to the end.”
Volume Two—Chapter Nineteen.
Peace and Sympathy.
“And I thought that there would be no more rest and comfort here, my child. Claire, one night—”
“No, no, dearest,” she cried, as she laid her soft white hand upon his lips; “the past cannot be recalled.”
“Only this little revelation,” he said, as he kissed the soft hand and held it to his cheek, “then the past shall be as dead with us. One night—since that night—I said to myself that I could bear no more, and I locked myself in my room; but something seemed to stay my hand—a something seemed to bid me live on, even in my pitiful, degraded state; and always—I cannot tell you how—your face seemed to be before my eyes. I tried to put it from me, but it was there. I fought against it, for I was enraged with you one minute, trembling with dread of what I dare not see the next; but still your face seemed to be there, my child, and I said at last that I would live it down or face it, if the dread time that haunts me always, as if lying in my path, should at last leap out.”