"You have heard my solemn appeal to God, sir. Between gentlemen of honor that should be sufficient."
The inventor's thin lips (from which the last drops of blood had disappeared within the last half hour) curved in a satirical smile. Marcus interpreted it as a reiterated doubt and a sneer upon his honor. For the moment he lost control of his temper, and was about to make a remark that he would have regretted immediately after, when the door yielded to a gentle pressure, and Pet entered the room.
Her face was pale. Her eyes were dull, and the lids hung droopingly, weighed down by twenty-four hours of wakefulness by the bedside of her sick teacher. The faint blue crescents beneath--those strange shadows of the grave, which sometimes seem the deepest when the eyes above are giving the brightest light--imparted a frail, delicate beauty to her countenance. They were the last master-touches of Nature in working out that portraiture of weaned and sleepy loveliness.
As she put her foot in the room, Mr. Minford and his guest telegraphed a truce with their eyes, and assumed a cheerful look.
Little Pet timidly ran to her father, and kissed him, and then shook hands with Marcus. He observed a shrinking in her touch. She averted her eyes.
"Your clothes are damp, and your feet wet, my darling," said the father,
"Are they?" answered Pet, looking down at her saturated garments and glistening shoes. "I had not noticed them. Oh! I am so happy that she is well now. The doctor called at the house just before I left, and said she was out of all danger. He ordered me home."
"Very sensible of the doctor. Another hour of this watching might have killed my poor child."
"So I took a last look at my dear teacher--who was asleep--and kissed her, and came right away through the rain."
"It was foolish to do that without an umbrella and overshoes, my child. But, as you were always forgetful of yourself, your father will not be forgetful of you, at any rate." The inventor glanced significantly at Marcus. That glance, so full of distrust, entered his soul. He longed to say something--if only a word of common civility--to the young girl; but he felt that there was now an impassable barrier between them.