“It is father—come to see how I look on my eighteenth birthnight!”
“Not to see you, my child,” the father answered; and in the tones of his voice there was a note of sorrow, as if the struggle of nineteen long years were not yet fully over.
To Hugo Warren the world was one dark, dreary night, and the gold so many coveted would have been freely given, could he but once have looked upon the face of his only child, who, bounding to his side, parted the white hair from his forehead, and laying his hand upon her head, asked him “to feel if she were not beautiful.”
Very tenderly and caressingly the father’s hand moved over the shining hair, the glowing cheek, and rounded arms of the graceful little figure which stood before him, then dashing a tear away, the blind man said:
“My Alice must be beautiful if she is, as they tell me, like her mother,” and the sightless eyes turned instinctively toward the mother, who, coming to his side, replied:
“Alice is like me as I was when you last saw my face—but I have changed since then—there are lines of silver in my hair, and lines of time upon my face.”
The blind man shook his head. The picture of the fond girl-wife, who, in his hour of bitter agony had whispered in his ear, “I will be sunlight, moonlight, starlight—everything to you, my husband,” had never changed to him—for faithfully and well that promise had been kept, and it was better perhaps, that he could not see the shadows on her face—shadows which foretold a darker hour than any he had ever known—an hour when the sunlight of her love would set forever. But no such forebodings were around him now. He held his wife and daughter both in his arms, and holding them thus, forgot for a moment that he was blind.
“Did you invite Adelaide?” Alice asked at last; and Mr. Warren replied:
“Yes, but it is doubtful whether she will come. She is very proud, her father says, and does not wish to put herself in a position to be slighted.”
“Oh, father!” Alice cried, “Adelaide Huntington does not know me. I could not slight her because she is poor, and if she comes I will treat her like a royal princess,” and Alice’s face flushed with pleasure as she thought how attentive she would be to the daughter of her father’s “confidential clerk and authorized agent.”