There had come back upon her, in a rapid flash of memory, the picture of a room in Brussels—a room lighted dimly by two wax-candles on the chimney-piece, where there was a tall dark man who snatched her up in his arms and kissed her before he went out. She remembered caring very little for his kisses, and having a childish consciousness of the fact that it was he who made her mamma cry so often in the quiet lonely evenings, when the mother and child were together in that desolate continental lodging.
Yet at this moment she was scarcely disposed to think much about her father's ill-conduct. She considered only that he was her father, and that they had found each other after long years of separation. She stretched out her arms, and would have fallen upon his breast; but something in his manner repelled her, something downcast and nervous, which had a chilling effect upon her, and gave her time to remember how little cause she had to love him. He did not seem aware of the affectionate impulse which had moved her towards him at first. He gave her his hand presently. It was deadly cold, and lay loosely in her own.
"I was asking my grandfather about you this morning," she said, wondering at his strange manner, "but he would not tell me where you were."
"Indeed! I am surprised to find you felt so much interest in me; I'm aware that I don't deserve as much. Yet I could plead plenty of excuses for my life, if I cared to trouble you with them; but I don't. It would be a long story; and when it was told, you might not believe it. Most men are, more or less, the slave of circumstances. I have suffered that kind of bondage all my life. I have known, too, that you were in good hands—better off in every way than you could have been in my care—or I should have acted differently in relation to you."
"There is no occasion to speak of the past," Marian replied gravely. "Providence was very good to me; but I know my poor mother's last days were full of sorrow. I cannot tell how far it might have been in your power to prevent that. It is not my place to blame, or even to question your conduct."
"You are an uncommonly dutiful daughter," Mr. Nowell exclaimed with rather a bitter laugh; "I thought that you would have repudiated me altogether perhaps; would have taken your tone from my father, who has grown pig-headed with old age, and cannot forgive me for having had the aspirations of a gentleman."
"It is a pity there should not be union between my grandfather and you at such a moment as this," Marian said.
"O, we are civil enough to each other. I bear no malice against the old man, though many sons in my position might consider themselves hardly used. And now I may as well go upstairs and pay my respects. Why is not your husband with you, by the bye?"
"He is not wanted here; and I do not even know that he is in London."
"Humph! He seems rather a mysterious sort of person, this husband of yours."