On greatness’ favour dream as I have done,
Wake and find nothing.”
Lord Cheriton heard the story of his daughter’s fate in silence. It was an old and a common story, and any words of reprobation uttered now would have seemed a mockery from the lips of the father who had allowed his daughter’s seducer to go unpunished.
“What did you do in your loneliness?” he asked, after a pause.
“I wandered from village to village for some months, living as the peasants live. I did not take Colonel Tremayne’s advice, and offer myself as a teacher of youth. I did not try to enter a respectable home under a false character. I lived among peasants and as they lived, and my money lasted a long time. I had always been fond of needlework, so I bought some materials before I left Naples, and I used to sit in the olive woods, or by the sea shore, making baby linen, which I was able to dispose of when my wanderings brought me to Genoa, where I lived in a garret all through the winter after my illness. I remained in Italy for more than a year, and then my heart sickened of the beauty of the sea and sky, the streets of palaces, the orange groves and olive woods, the bright monotony of loveliness. Some of my own misery seemed to have mixed itself with all that was loveliest in that Southern world, and I felt as if grey skies and dull streets would be a relief to me. So I came to London, and found this lodging, and have managed to live—as you see—ever since. I have no wish to live any better. I have only one friend in the world. I have no desire to change. If my mother cared for me and wanted me I would go to her—but she never wanted me in the past, and I doubt if she will ever want me in the future.”
“Your mother is a most unhappy woman, Mercy, and she has made her unhappiness a part of my life, and a part of other lives. She left her home this morning, alone, without giving any one notice where she was going, or why she was going. I am full of fear about her. My only hope was to find her here.”
“And not having found her here, what are you going to do? Where will you look for her?”
“I don’t know. I am altogether at fault. She had no friends in London, or anywhere else. She had isolated herself most completely. At Cheriton she was respected, but she made no friends. How could she make friends in a place where her whole existence was a secret? Ah, Mercy, have compassion upon me in my trouble—give me something of a child’s love, for the burden of my sin is too heavy for me to bear.”
He sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands, and she knew that the strong man was crying like a child.
Her heart was touched by his distress, as a woman if not as a daughter.