He was pacing slowly up and down the room, his hands folded behind his back. His face was slightly tired, and yet he too wore that odd expression of mingled triumph and pain which Mrs. Cardew’s eyes expressed.
When the mother and the girls entered the room he at once shut the door. Mr. Cardew looked first of all at Merry. He held out his hand to her. “Come to me, little girl,” he said.
She flew to him and put her arms round his neck. She kissed him several times. “Oh dad! dad!” she said, “I know I was downright horrid and unkind and perfectly dreadful yesterday, and I don’t—no, I don’t—want to leave you and mother. If I was discontented then, I am not now.”
Merry believed her own words at that moment, for the look on her father’s face had struck to her very heart.
He disengaged her pretty arms very gently, and, still holding her hand, went up to Cicely, who was clinging to her mother. “I have just got some news for you both,” he said. “You know, of course, that Miss Beverley cannot teach you any longer?”
“Poor old Beverley,” said Cicely; “we are so sorry. But you’ll find another good governess for us, won’t you, dad?”
“I am afraid I can’t,” said Mr. Cardew, “So I sent for you 57 to-night to tell you that I have broken the resolve which I always meant to keep.”
“You have what?” said Merry.
“I have turned my back on a determination which I made when you were both very little girls, and to-day I went up to town and saw Mrs. Ward.”
“Oh!” said Merry. She turned white and dropped her father’s hand, and, clasping her own two hands tightly together, gazed at him as though she would devour his face.