“I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!”
The hateful words came back to her again! She had failed! This was the thought that the morning brought; and as she rose from the couch her mother’s book, with its fateful words, fell on the floor.
She caught it up and pressed it against her face.
“Mother! O mother!” she whispered. “Yes; I have failed; I have failed,” she said.
And with the sense of failure dominant in her mind she made ready for the day. It was her birthday; she was twenty-one, and that was very old!
By the time she was ready to go down stairs to meet her father she saw the whole matter in what seemed to her a sane, reasonable spirit; she was even tranquil, as she sat for a moment at her dressing-table, her hands clasped before her, pondering her course. She had put on a cloth street-gown, and fastened a black stock at her throat. The little book lay beside her and she carried it to her desk and put it away in the drawer, where she had kept it since the morning a year ago, when it had first fallen under her eyes in the garret. She had been false to its charge; but that was past. She had failed; but she would begin again.
Her heart heat fast as she went down stairs. Her father sat in the sitting-room as he always did, waiting for her to come to breakfast; but as she stood upon the threshold, whence she had often called her good morning, he did not look up from the newspaper with his usual smile. She was touched by the pathos of his figure. He seemed older, more shrunken; his profile, as the early light gave it to her, was less hard. His lean cheeks had the touch of color they always wore in the morning from his careful shaving, and his long hair was brushed back with something more than its usual uncompromising smoothness. A certain primness and rigidity in him which had often vexed her, struck only her pity now.
“Father!”
He rose and turned toward her with a pathetic appeal in his eyes.
“Good morning, Zee,” he said. Habit was strong in him and they usually went to breakfast as soon as she came down. He took a step now toward the dining-room.