“I know, I know,” Sanchia murmured, and then begged him not to speak of it.
“Ah, but I must, you know,” he vowed. “What! A damned unnatural father!...” And then he held her closely, while he whispered his anxiety. “Sancie—tell me, my lamb—put my mind at rest. He—that fellow—that Ingram—he was good to you, hey? He didn't—hey?”
She vowed in her turn. “Oh, yes, dearest, yes. Of course he was. I was very happy, except for—what couldn't be helped, you know.”
“Yes, yes—it couldn't be helped. I know that you felt that. I was bound—for the others, don't you see?—sake of example. That sort of thing, don't you see?” He shook his head. “We can't have that, you know. It don't do—in the long run. Very irregular, hey? And your mother, you know—she takes these things to heart. Goes too far, I say. Sometimes goes a little to extremes, you know.” He grew quite scared as he recalled the scene. “I shall never forget”—shuddering, he clasped her close. “My darling girl, let's be happy again! It shall be right as—well, as rain, you know—now. We'll have you with a child on your knee in no time,—hey?” He seemed to think that marriage alone could work this boon. Again—as before with Vicky—Sanchia had not the heart to gainsay him. She allowed him to speculate as he would; and her mother, returning, found the pair, one on the other's knee, with the future cut and dried.
But Sanchia rose at her entry.
“Dearest, I must go now,” she told him, “but I'll see you again very soon.”
He urged her to stay and dine. “We're quite alone, you know! No ceremony with our child, hey!”
But she smilingly refused. “No, darling, I won't stop now. I'll come again—” her mother's stretched lips, stomaching what she could not sanction, stood, as it were, before the home doors.
He looked wistfully at her—aware, he too, of the sentries at the gate. “You might—we are pretty lonely here, we old people—I should have said you might come back—there's your old room, you know—eating its head off, hey?”
Sanchia kissed him. “Darling—we'll see. We'll talk about it soon. But I must go now—to my books. I'm working very hard, at my Italian. I've forgotten—lots.”