Gradually Edith became calmer, and her calmness was increased by the discovery that her father was painfully weak and exhausted. He had been overwhelmed by the emotions which this interview had called forth. He now sat gazing at her with speechless love, holding her hands in his, but his breath came and went rapidly, and there was a feverish tremulousness in his voice and a flush on his pale cheeks which alarmed her. She tried to lessen his agitation by talking about her own prospects, but Dalton did not wish to.
“Not now, daughter,” he said. “I will hear it all some other time. I am too weary, Let me only look at your dear face, and hear you call me by that sweet name, and feel my child's hands in mine. That will be bliss enough for this day. Another time we will speak about the—the situation that you are in.”
As he was thus agitated, Edith was forced to refrain from asking him a thousand things which she was longing to know. She wished to learn how he had escaped, how he had made it to be believed that he was dead, and whether he was in any present danger. But all this she had to postpone. She had also to postpone her knowledge of that great secret—the secret that had baffled her, and which he had preserved inviolable through all these years. She now saw that her suspicions of the man “John Wiggins” must have been unfounded, and indeed the personality of “Wiggins” became a complete puzzle to her.
He bade her a tender adieu, promising to come early on the following day.
But on the following day there were no signs of him. Edith waited in terrible impatience, which finally deepened into alarm as his coming was still delayed. She had known so much of sorrow that she had learned to look for it, and began to expect some new calamity. Here, where she had found her father, where she had received his forgiveness for that which would never cease to cause remorse to herself, here, in this moment of respite from despair, she saw the black prospect of renewed misery. It was as though she had found him for a moment, only to lose him forever.
Toward evening a note was sent to her. She tore it open. It was from Mrs. Dunbar, and informed her that her father was quite ill, and was unable to visit her, but hoped that he might recover.
After that several days passed, and she heard nothing. At length another note came informing her that her father had been dangerously ill, but was now convalescent.
Other days passed, and Edith heard regularly. Her father was growing steadily better. On one of these notes he had written his name with a trembling hand.
And so amidst these fresh sorrows, and with her feelings ever alternating between hope and despair, Edith lingered on through the time that intervened until the day of the trial.