“Are you—?” he began; but could not speak the words.
“My name,” said the stranger, with astonishing composure, in view of his late fury, “is Andrew Bolton; and the girl you have been praising and—courting—is my daughter. Now you see what a sentimental fool a woman can be. Well; I’ll have it out with her. I’ll live here in Brookville on equal terms with my neighbors. If there was ever a debt between us, it’s been paid to the uttermost farthing. I’ve paid it in flesh and blood and manhood. Is there any money—any property you can name worth eighteen years of a man’s life? And such years— God! such years!”
Wesley Elliot stared. At last he understood the girl, and as he thought of her shrinking aloofness standing guard over her eager longing for friends—for affection, something hot and wet blurred his eyes. He was scarcely conscious that the man, who had taken to himself the name with which he had become hatefully familiar during his years in Brookville, was still speaking, till a startling sentence or two aroused him.
“There’s no reason under heaven why you should not marry her, if you like. Convict’s daughter? Bah! I snap my fingers in their faces. My girl shall be happy yet. I swear it! But we’ll stop all this sickly sentimentality about the money. We’ll—”
The minister held up a warning hand.
An immense yearning pity for Lydia had taken possession of him; but for the man who had thus risen from a dishonorable grave to blight her girlhood he felt not a whit.
“You’d better keep quiet,” he said sternly. “You’d far better go away and leave her to live her life alone.”
“You’d like that; wouldn’t you?” said Bolton dryly.
He leaned forward and stared the young man in the eyes.
“But she wouldn’t have it that way. Do you know that girl of mine wouldn’t hear of it. She expects to make it up to me.... Imagine making up eighteen years of hell with a few pet names, a soft bed and—”