"Yes," she said, her eyes wide with wonder.
"I am going to speak to him, Frances." He took her hands gently, "I am going to ask him to give you to me."
This, then, was his answer. Her lips trembled. Lawson looked long and searchingly, saying no other word. He bent, kissed her, almost as if in consecration, and walked with quick step across the room.
Frances leaned, shaken with tremulous happiness; she saw the glitter of jewels on the table and smiled happily, she took from its case the hoop of diamonds and ran it on her finger, her eyes too dim to watch its sparkle aright. The others she left untouched. She heard the voices across the hall, and she remembered again, with a shock of sorrow, what this would mean to her father. How could she leave him; how could he let her go? She walked across the room restlessly, she heard a chair pushed back—Lawson's footstep. A sudden shyness possessed her.
Down at the end of the room was another door, opening on the hall behind the stairway, she closed it softly, and stood there hidden as Lawson's quick step rang across the hall; then she slipped into the dining-room, and pulled aside the portière.
Her father's head was sunken on the table, his arm flung above it. She ran up to him. "Father," she pleaded as she bent over him.
But he never moved.
"Father, don't think I love you less," she whispered.
He pushed back his chair and faced her. "Did you know," he demanded, "did you know Lawson was a divorced man?"