All this time a man had been lingering near them unheeded. He could see their agony, but he could not catch their words, drowned in the ocean’s roar and the crackling of the flames, blent with the wild cries of the panic-stricken passengers.
Leon Lyndon bent his convulsed face to his daughter’s and pressed his lips to hers, then murmured solemnly:
“Darling, you will not be alone in the world as you said just now, and as I have made you believe in my selfish anger. You have your mother!”
“Papa!” she gasped.
The fire roared and crackled over their heads; the beasts still fought going down the ladder to safety, and the man close to them watched with impatience for the father to make some effort to save his child.
CHAPTER XXVII.
“I LOVED HER ALWAYS.”
Leon Lyndon knew that his time was short. The last words must be hurried, and he continued:
“If you escape this horror, Jessie, go to New York to Mrs. Dalrymple. Tell her you are her daughter, sent to her at last by her erring husband. Tell her that in his last hour Leon Dalrymple’s heart was true to her as from the first hour he saw her beautiful face. Tell her he prayed her pardon for the impatient temper and cruel pride that turned her heart against him; that while both were wrong, he was most to blame; though if she had only looked back the day she went she would have seen his arms extended to take her back, and he would have gone on his knees to beg her to stay! All is past and gone—the hopes, the fears, the longings, the despair, the vengeful anger that deprived her of her child—but I have loved her always—I could not thrust her from my heart!”
His strained voice broke in agony and he hid his face against her shoulder, all the anguish of more than eighteen years crowding on him, blent with the horror of the moment.
Ah, those cruel years of separation, what agony, what hopeless love, what mad yearnings, what unutterable despair had been crowded in them!