“You know, Richard, you are to go with me to-night to call on Jenny Hayes.”
But Richard did not know it, and as his distressed sister saw him going down the walk with Adelaide Huntington on his arm, she muttered:
“I’d like to see the man who could make such a fool of me as that girl has made of him!”
A wish not likely to be verified, considering that she had already lived forty-five years without seeing the man.
CHAPTER VII.
THE UNKNOWN DELIVERER.
Very rapidly the spring passed away, and the soft, sunny skies of June had more than once tempted the blind man and his daughter into the open fields, or the woods which lay beyond. Their favorite resort, however, was a retired spot on the bank of the river, where, shut out from human eyes, they could speak together of the past, the present, and what the future might bring. Here, one pleasant afternoon, they came, and while Mr. Warren talked of his childhood and his early home, Alice sat sewing at his feet, until growing somewhat weary, she arose and began to search for wild flowers upon the mossy bank. Suddenly espying some beautiful pond lilies floating upon the surface of the water, she exclaimed:
“Oh, father, father, these must be white lilies just like those you used to gather when a boy.”
“Where, where?” the blind man asked, and his face shone with the intense longing he felt to hold once more within his hand the fair blossoms so interwoven with memories of his boyhood.
“They are here on the river,” Alice replied, “and I can get them, too, by going out upon that tree which has partly fallen into the stream.”