A heavy frown came between his brows as he continued:
“What a return after my years of exile and toil—my sister and her husband dead, their children and my precious daughter lost to me in the mazes of this great, wicked city. For a week now I have vainly sought to trace them, but since my sister’s death and her husband’s removal I can find no trace save the item accidentally read in the World of John Lyndon’s accident and death. I have been to the hospital where he died, but they can give me no clew to his family. He was buried at the city’s expense, they said, so they must be in the direst poverty. Oh, what a cruel fate must be theirs, dear little ones! Oh, my Jessie, my bright-eyed darling, I wronged you after all in taking my revenge on her! You would have fared better in her care. Oh, if God will only let me find you, my sweet one, I will make it up to you by such devotion as the world never knew! Jessie! Jessie!” and his head sank on his hands while the fire of his cigar went out in ashes.
Again he lifted his head with a start at the sound of a footstep. Other men were entering. They must not find him moping like a woman.
He took up a newspaper and looked over it at random. It bore yesterday’s date, but that did not matter. He was only pretending to read.
The column of deaths came before his eyes, and almost mechanically he read the first funeral notice:
“Died.—Suddenly, at her mother’s residence, No. 1512A Fifth Avenue, Tuesday evening, Darling, only daughter of Mrs. Verna Dalrymple.
“Friends and relatives of the family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral services from the family residence, Thursday noon. Interment at Greenwood.”
“Merciful Heaven!”
The words breathed low and faintly over the man’s suddenly blanched lips, and the paper shook in his nervous grasp while his eyes stared in a sort of incredulous horror at the printed words that moved him so.
Thoughts flew like lightning through his brain: