“With best wishes for your welfare, temporal and eternal, I remain, my dear father,
“Your affectionate daughter,
“Hortensia Bannister.”
George Vane burst into tears as he finished the letter. How cruelly she had stabbed him, this honourable, conscientious daughter, whom he had robbed certainly, but in a generous, magnanimous, reckless fashion, that made robbery rather a princely virtue than a sordid vice. How cruelly the old heart was lacerated by that bitter letter!
“As if I would touch the money,” cried Mr. Vane, elevating his trembling hands to the low ceiling with a passionate and tragic gesture. “Have I been such a wretch to you, Eleanor, that this woman should accuse me of wishing to snatch the bread from your innocent lips?”
“Papa, papa!”
“Have I been such an unnatural father, such a traitor, liar, swindler, and cheat, that my own daughter should say these things to me?”
His voice rose higher with each sentence, and the tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks.
Eleanor tried to kiss away those tears; but he pushed her from him with passionate vehemence.
“Go away from me, my child, I am a wretch, a robber, a scoundrel, a——”
“No, no, no, papa,” cried Eleanor; “you are all that is good; you have always been good to me, dear, dear papa.”