At last, in his agony, his sorrow, his remorse, his despair, he remembered Florence. He saw again her trembling lips, her lonely face longing for love—the terrible hopeless change that came over it when his own cruel arm struck her on that final day when she had stood before him.
His pride at last had fallen. He knew now himself what it was to be rejected and deserted. He thought how the daughter he had disliked, of them all, had never changed in her love for him. And by his own act he had lost her for ever. His son, his wife, his fortune, all had gone, and now at last in his wretchedness he knew that Florence would always have been true to him if he had only let her.
Days passed, but he never left the house; every night he wandered through the empty rooms like a ghost. He grew to be a haggard, wasted likeness of himself. And one day the thought came to him that it would be better if he, too, were dead, even if it be by his own hand. This thought clung to him. He could not shake it off.
One day he took a pistol from his dressing-table and sat hugging it to his breast. At length he rose and stood in front of a mirror with the weapon in his hand.
But suddenly he heard a cry—a piercing, loving, rapturous cry—and he saw at his feet, clasping his knees, with her face lifted to his, Florence, his long-lost daughter.
"Papa, dearest papa!" she cried, "I have come back to you. I never can be happy more without you."
He tottered to a chair, feeling her draw his arms around her neck. He felt her wet cheek laid against his own. He heard her soft voice telling him that now she herself had a little child—a baby boy born at sea—whom she and Walter had named Paul.
"Dear papa," she said, "you will come home with me. We will teach our little child to love and honor you, and we will tell him when he can understand that you had a son of that name once, and that he died and that you were sorry; but that he is gone to Heaven, where we all hope to see him sometime. Kiss me, papa, as a promise that you will be reconciled. Never let us be parted any more!"
His hard heart had been melting while she spoke. As she clung closer to him he kissed her, and she heard him mutter, "Oh, God forgive me, for I need it very much!"
She drew him to his feet, and walking with a feeble gait he went with her. With her eyes upon his face and his arm about her, she led him to the coach waiting at the door and carried him away.