But to the woman sitting alone upon the verandah there was no peace. Her heart and mind were in a tumult of conflicting emotion. She was thinking of the girl who had come so unexpectedly into her life and home. The silence and restraint of long years had at last reached their climax. A mother's passionate love possessed her soul, and an intense affection for the child of her womb swept like an overmastering current through her very being. The girl was hers, she must keep her, and she was determined that no power on earth should take her from her.
She was suddenly aroused from her reverie by the sound of an auto upon the road. It drew up and stopped right in front of the gate. A man at once alighted and walked rapidly toward the house. Mrs. Hampton rose and met him just as he stepped upon the verandah. The visitor was a middle-aged man, of overbearing manner. He had not the courtesy to remove his hat in the presence of the woman, nor to take the big cigar he was smoking from his mouth. In an instant the thought flashed into Mrs. Hampton's mind that this was the man who had come to take away her daughter. She had been dreading his appearance, and now he was before her.
"I am Henry Randall," the man announced, "and I am looking for my daughter. Is she here?"
"Your daughter!" Mrs. Hampton replied. "Why are you searching for her here? Did she not drown herself?"
A heartless laugh broke from the man's lips, as he took the cigar from his mouth, and flicked off the ashes. He looked piercingly at the woman as if expecting to see her quail. But Mrs. Hampton's eyes never flinched for an instant. She was angry at the man's manner of approach, and when a quiet woman is aroused there is need for caution.
"Why don't you answer my question?" the man asked. "I want to know if my daughter is here? She didn't drown herself, though she deserves to be drowned for the way she has acted."
"No, your daughter is not here," Mrs. Hampton quietly replied.
"Not here!" Randall plainly showed his surprise. "Why, I was told that she came to your house."
"Then you were wrongly informed. Your daughter has never been inside my house."
"And you have not seen her?"