"If you do not open the door without delay, I will break it in. I will not be kept from my child."
Then the door was unlocked, and she saw Anne and Margery, Hannah, looking frightened and angry, and a tall, richly-dressed gentleman, whom she seemed directly to remember, and who caught her in his arms, calling her his darling, his poor, motherless, abused child.
"Are you really my father,—my own father who was dead?" she asked, at last, and leaning back to look at him.
"I am your own father, child, counted dead for so many years."
"And is mamma come alive again too?"
Lucy felt herself drawn into a closer embrace as her father whispered,—
"No, dear child: your precious mother cannot come again; but we shall go to her."
"And will you take me away and let me live with you?" asked Lucy. "Oh, papa, I will try to be so very good, if you will!"
"Yes, Lucy: you shall go with me this very night. Mistress Burgess will receive you."
"The child must not be removed till my mistress returns," said Hannah, tartly. "Her guardian put her in my mistress's care; and to him she is answerable,—not to a stranger."