Sibyl as she spoke laid her soft hand on her father’s brow and tried to smooth out some wrinkles.
“Same as if you was an old man,” she said: “but you’re perfect, perfect, and I love you, I love you,” and she encircled his neck with her soft arms and pressed many kisses on his face.
On these occasions Philip Ogilvie felt uncomfortable, for he was a man with many passions and beset with infirmities, and at the time when Sibyl praised him most, when she uttered her charming, confident words, and raised her eyes full of absolute faith to his, he was thinking with a strange acute pain at his heart of a transaction which he might undertake and of a temptation which he knew well was soon to be presented to him.
“I should not like the child to know about it,” was his reflection; “but all the same, if I do it, if I fall, it will be for her sake, for hers alone.”
CHAPTER II
Sibyl skipped down to the drawing-room with her spirits brimful of happiness. She opened the door wide and danced in.
“Here I come,” she cried, “here I come, buttercups and daisies and violets and me.” She looked from one parent to the other, held out her flowing short skirts with each dimpled hand, and danced across the room.
Mrs. Ogilvie had tears in her eyes; she had just come to the sentimental part of her quarrel. At sight of the child she rose hastily, and walked to the window. Philip Ogilvie went down the room, put both his hands around Sibyl’s waist, and lifted her to a level with his shoulders.