“Claire, only a few short weeks, and I shall be in my grave. Don’t start, my child. To you, in your sweet spring of life, it is the black pit of horror. To me, in the bitter winter of my life, there is no horror there: it is but the calm, silent resting-place where tired nature sleeps and life’s troubles end. There, there, my little one, to whose sweet virtues and truth I have been blind, I am almost content with my fate for the reason that you have awakened me from a trance into which I had fallen. Claire, my child, can you forgive this weak, vain, old man?”
She leaned forward and kissed his white forehead, and, as he drew her closer to him, she nestled in his breast, and clung to him, sobbing convulsively.
“Hah!” he sighed, “I did not know I could be so happy again. Think of me as an innocent—an injured man, my child, as of one whose lips are sealed. Pray for me as I shall pray for you.”
“But, father, I may see Mr Barclay?”
He was silent for a few minutes.
“Yes,” he said at last.
Claire uttered a sigh of relief.
“You shall ask him to come here. I will appeal to him to watch over you. He is rough, Claire, and his wife is vulgar—coarse; but, God help me! I wish I had had such a true and sterling heart. There, hush! I have made my will,” he said, smiling. “It is done; I have but to seal it with my death, and I see its approach without a shade of fear.”
“But, father! my dearest father!”
“My own,” he said tenderly, as he kissed her and smiled down upon her. “Ah! you do not shrink from me now. Sweet, true woman. Oh, that I could have been so blind! You were going to ask me something.”