“Drink this. It will do you good. You are white as a sheet,” the woman said, offering her a cup of strong, hot coffee.
Elithe drank it, and, sitting down upon a bench outside the door, fell asleep from fatigue and exhaustion. Here her father found her when he came from his interview with the stranger, who had seemed gentlemanly in every way and very profuse in his thanks for what Elithe had done for him.
“If she could only stay for a day or two, I believe she would exorcise all the evil spirits there are in me and make a man of me,” he said.
He emphasized the spirits, and Roger knew what he meant. But this was not the time for a temperance lecture, and he only replied that on no account could he allow his daughter to stay. It was not the place for her.
“I know,—I know,” the stranger interrupted him. “Miss Grundy would say it is very much not the place for her, but she’d be safe with these men, who adore her; and safe with me. Suppose I am a scamp of the deepest dye, I’d as soon insult my mother were she living as harm your daughter by a word, or look, or thought. Let her stay for one day, and you stay with her.”
He was very earnest, and drops of sweat stood on his forehead, but Mr. Hansford was firm.
“I’ll come to-morrow and see how you are,” he said, “and when you are able you will find a plain but good hotel in Samona, where you will be more comfortable than here. My daughter must go home.”
“I suppose you are right, but you’ll let me say good-bye to her!” Pennington said, quite cheerfully, buoyed up with the prospect of soon getting to Samona, where he would be near Elithe.
He had seen many young girls, most of whom had shunned him on close acquaintance as one whose atmosphere was not wholesome. And he did not blame them. He knew himself perfectly, and knew what feelings were stirred in him at the sight of a pretty face. But he had spoken truly when he said he would as soon think of insulting his mother as breathing a poisonous breath upon Elithe. It was as if she were hedged about with an iron fence up to which he might come and look upon the aureole of purity and innocence and girlish beauty surrounding her, but beyond which he could not pass. He was steeped to the dregs in dissipation, but had sworn to reform, and had said so to Roger, who was reminded of the couplet,
“The de’il when sick a saint would be,