“Papa, papa!” she cried, clinging to him, “pray forgive me. I could not love Mr Tregenna. And why should you wish to rob yourself? I have only enough love for you, dear,” she continued, taking his face between her hands, and kissing him passionately. “If I reproach you sometimes about the poor people, it is because I am so jealous of my father’s good name, and it cuts me to the heart to think that the people should not look up to, and venerate him as I do myself.”
“Tut-tut-tut! my darling. If I were a saint they would still talk. Am I not working for you? I want you to be rich, and to stand as high in the world as I can contrive.”
“Yes, yes, I know, dear,” she said, with her hand playing about his face and caressing his grey hair; “but I would rather be poor than lose the people’s respect.”
“Well, well, Rhody, my darling,” he said, smiling, “we’ll be rich and respectable as well. There, there, I must go. John Tregenna must get some one else to cure his broken heart. Good-by, my dear, good-by.”
“And you are not angry with me, papa?”
“Not a bit, Rhody,” he said, kissing her affectionately, and looking at her with eyes suffused, but full of pride. “Angry? no! God bless you, my dear! I’m disappointed, but I don’t know but what I like you all the better for your spirit.”
He hurried away to hide his weakness, for his love for his child was the one soft spot in his nature.
“I’m glad, and yet I’m sorry,” he said. “Tregenna would have been a powerful friend, and now what I have to hope is that he will not prove to be a bitter enemy. I must fight it out, I suppose, just as I have fought out far worse troubles.”
“Any one been, Chynoweth?” he said to his confidential clerk, as he entered his office.
“Mr Tregenna’s waiting to see you, sir.”