“On that point you may make your mind quite easy, Graves; for I, who am the girl’s father, tell you that I consider you will be giving her quite as much as she gives you. I have never hidden from you that I am in a sense a man under a cloud. My follies came to an end many years ago, it is true, and I have never fallen into the clutches of the law, still they were bad enough to force me to change my name and to begin life afresh. Should you marry my daughter, and should you wish it, you will of course have the right to learn my true name, though on that point I shall make an appeal to your generosity and ask you not to press your right. I have done with the past, of which even the thought is hateful to me, and I do not wish to reopen old sores; so perhaps you may be content with the assurance that I am of a good and ancient family, and that before I got into trouble I served in the army with some distinction: for instance, I received the wound that crippled me at the battle of the Alma.”
“I shall never press you to tell that which you desire to keep to yourself, Mr. Levinger.”
“It is like you to say so, Graves,” he answered, with evident relief; “but the mere fact that I make such a request will show you what I mean when I say that Emma has as much or more to gain from this marriage than you have, since it is clear that some rumours of her father’s disgrace must follow her through life; moreover she is humbly born upon her mother’s side. I do trust and pray, my dear fellow, that it will come off. Alas! I am not long for this world, my heart is troubling me more and more, and the doctors have warned me that I may die at any moment; therefore it is my most earnest desire to see the daughter whom I love better than anything on earth, happily settled before I go.”
“Well, Mr. Levinger,” Henry answered, “I will ask her to-morrow if I find an opportunity, but the issue does not rest with me. I only wish that I were more worthy of her.”
“I am glad to hear it. God bless you, and God speed you, my dear Graves! I hope when I am gone that, whatever you may learn about my unfortunate past, you will still try to think kindly of me, and to remember that I was a man, cursed by nature with passions of unusual strength, which neither my education nor the circumstances of my early life helped me to control.”
“It is not for me to judge you or any other man; I leave that to those who are without sin,” said Henry, and the conversation came to an end.
That night Henry was awakened by hearing people moving backwards and forwards in the passages. For a moment he thought of burglars, and wondered if he should get up; but the sounds soon ceased, so he turned over and went to sleep again. As he learned in the morning, the cause of the disturbance was that Mr. Levinger had been seized with one of his heart attacks, which for a few minutes threatened to be serious, if not fatal. Under the influence of restoratives, that were always kept at hand, the danger passed as quickly as it had arisen, although Emma remained by her father’s bedside to watch him for a while.
“That was a near thing, Emma,” he said presently: “for about thirty seconds I almost thought——” and he stopped.
“Well, it is over now, father dear,” she answered.
“Yes, but for how long? One day I shall be taken in this fashion and come back no more.”