Her head seemed bursting with her intensity of thought. What should she do to rid herself of him? She dared not ring the bell and ask a servant to show him out. It was dangerous to cross the whims of a madman; and, with a shudder, she pictured a sudden lapse into anger on his part, and the breaking of Lady Forrest’s gilt furniture.
Well, some unexpected way of deliverance might open. In the meantime, she must force herself into composure, and try to keep him in good humour.
Fortunate for her was it that he appeared a cheerful madman. One of the gloomy, raving kind would send her into hysterics.
“You seem frightened,” he said, in dulcet tones; “but you will be quite free from fear when I tell you who I am.”
His manner was inviting. He wanted her to urge him on in proclaiming his identity, and, although she had no burning curiosity on the subject, she thought it politic to murmur, faintly, “And who are you?”
“Don’t scream nor cry out,” he said, putting up one hand by way of caution; then leaning forward, and in an assumed and melodramatic voice, he uttered the words, “I am your father.”
Oh! her father only. She was prepared to hear the Shah of Persia or the Emperor of Japan. So his warning was unnecessary. All that she could do now in the way of making a noise would be to emit a faint, a very faint, squeak; but she was forgetting his peculiar affliction, and, summoning all her forces, she tried to bring a look of astonishment to her blank face.
Her effort was evidently crowned with success, for with a flattered air he went on: “Yes, you were stolen from me when you were a baby. Where has Fordyce been hiding you all these years?”
The mention of her husband’s name threw Nina into a state of mingled resentment, terror, and anger. Could it be that she had made a mistake,—that this man was not mad? Could it be that the man in America was a usurper,—the lonely man reading his paper and thinking of her? No, there was her real father, she could never love another; and mad or not mad, she would not encourage this man. She hated his quiet, weary manner, his cynical tones. He was no relative of hers. She would not have him. She loved the man in America.