"Their father!—I thought he was dead!" she murmured, awe-struck.
"There were times when we all thought so. He disappeared some years ago. But he's alive, Alicia. I've just heard from Dibdin, who found him in Japan." Her eyes grew wider.
"How terrible!" she breathed. "Does he know all—that has happened?"
"He does now—of course he didn't until Mr. Dibdin told him." And then this occurred to me. Ought I to shield Pendleton to the extent of telling her positively that he had lost his memory or identity? No. A confidant deserves scrupulous honesty, even if that confidant be as young as Alicia. "He told Dibdin," I went on, "that he lost his memory of the past and found himself one day stranded in Manila. Led rather a wild and worthless life afterwards—people who lose their memories seem to do that."
"Do you think that's true?" she queried.
"I don't know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we'll have to accept that version. Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel sure."
Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child's face in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman.
"Do you think he'll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?"
"That's the crux of the whole matter, Alicia. I don't know. But if he does, he'll have a right to do so, of course; they are his."
"Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant despair. "Turn them over to such a man! Is that the way the world's arranged?"