"Ah! And your father, dear old fellow, how is he now, eh?"
"He has been dead four years, my Lord, and if you will excuse me——"
"Positively I must see you and have a chat with you over things, Harold. You'll dine with me to-night? Say yes!" Lord Gowerhurst wrung the young man's hand. "Come, come, I can't take no—I positively refuse to take no! Hang it, after all these years old friends and that sort of thing, we can't pass like ships in the confounded night, can we, eh?"
Sir Harold Scarsdale smiled. He had a stern, grave face, but the smile lighted it up.
"To-night then, my Lord, since you wish it, here—at what time?"
"Eight o'clock," his Lordship said briskly, "and I shall look for you, it's been a delight, a sheer delight to see you again!"
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE DAWN
My dear Kathleen, I am looking forward with keen enjoyment to my coming visit to your charming home. That I have not come before you will easily understand, my love. I am an old fellow and my ways are not your ways. I am sensitive, very sensitive, as I think you know. To have felt myself de trop would have been a cause of pain to me. I felt I could not do it and though my heart was yearning for you and though I have often, a thousand times, pictured your beautiful home, its master and mistress, though I, in my solitary and none too comfortable rooms, have often visioned to myself your delightful life at Homewood, yet I have never intruded. I have been tempted many times. I have said to myself, I will run down just for the day, then I hesitated. Should I be welcome? I know, I know, my love, that my dear daughter's heart is always affectionately inclined to her doting father, yet in your new life, with your new interests, with your young husband, I have wondered, is there a place, some nook, some corner for the old fellow to stow himself away in?
"But bless me, how I ramble on? I live a very quiet and uneventful life, my appetite is not what it was. I sometimes walk round to the Club and try and peck a morsel for lunch, but I am not my own man. I think I feel my loneliness. Well, well, my dear, I look forward, as I say, to the fourteenth of this month, with great expectation and happiness. Now I shall behold you in your own home. I shall behold my dear daughter, mistress of a good house, dispensing her and her husband's hospitality with the gracious courtesy that is the birthright only of a woman of breeding. Give my kindly remembrance to your husband and believe me, my dear Kathleen, ever your fond and devoted Father, Gowerhurst.