“You want to make love to me,” she said. “As I have told you before, that can’t be done. I am your daughter,—deny it as you may to the end, nothing can alter the fact. Do you remember the man I was engaged to?—Captain Cleeve?—the ‘Honourable’ Reginald Cleeve?”
At this he was fairly startled and he gave a gasp of astonishment.
“I remember the man my daughter was engaged to,” he said. “His name was Cleeve. But he is married——”
“Very much so!” and Diana smiled. “But that doesn’t prevent his making love to me—and I let him do it! You see, he’s no relation!—and I don’t consider his fat wife any more than he considered me when he married her and threw me over! But he’s like you—he doesn’t believe I’m the old Diana!”
“Of course not!” and Mr. May expanded his chest with a long breath of superior wisdom. “I should like to see him and talk to him about you and your sad condition of mind——”
“No doubt you would, but you won’t,” said Diana calmly. “I have forbidden him to go near you for the present. He dare not ask any questions about me—till—till I have done with him!”
What a look there was in her eyes! James Polydore shrank under it as though it blinded him.
“Dare not? Done with him?” he echoed stupidly.
She laughed, quite sweetly.
“There, poor Pa, do go home! Pay your attentions to my mother’s companion, Miss Preston—if she really likes your endearments, why, then, ‘crabbed age and youth’ may live together! Poor mother! She never found out all your little ways!—some of them she discovered by chance—but I knew them all! What would you give to be as young as I am at your age! ‘Too late, too late!—ye cannot enter now!’” Her laughter rang out again,—then approaching him, she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders and kissed him. “There, that’s a true daughter’s kiss!—make the best of it, dear Pa! Go home and be a good, nice, moral old man!—sit on one side of the fireplace with Ma on the other, and settle down into Darby and Joan!—such a nice couple!—with a dash of Miss Preston between to keep up your spirits! And don’t come back here ever!—unless you accept the true position we occupy of father and daughter—father growing old, and daughter growing young!”