“So much the worse, for she loves luxury and pleasure, and her heart is almost starved for love. You know I have a reserved nature, Everard, and never pet anything. I have brought her up kindly, but rigidly, and she resents my discipline and your neglect almost equally.”
“Poor girl! Perhaps she has cause. I have certainly almost forgotten her existence in these years of exile. But what alleviation was there to my misery except to forget?” he cried, passionately.
“Poor boy!” she sighed, forgetting that he was forty-five. She was twenty years older, and to her he appeared young.
He made a movement of keen self-scorn.
“I don’t deserve your pity!” he cried. “I have been a coward, shifting my burden on your shoulders, hating to come home, weary of my life. But at last the voice of duty clamored at my heart. I remembered you were growing old, and that the child was almost a woman. I came at last, but even then reluctantly. Can you ever forgive my fault?”
Many times she had said to herself, in her impatience of Cinthia’s discontent, that she could never forgive her brother for saddling her with the care of a child in her old age; but at the sight of him, so sad, so broken, so self-accusing, she could not utter the words of blame that at first had trembled on her tongue. She answered instead:
“What could you have done with a girl-child? And I was the only one you could turn to in your trouble. But I must warn you that you will not find an affectionate daughter. You have been away so long that she scarcely remembers your face, and she has chafed bitterly at your neglect.”
“I suppose that is natural, and—I do not think we shall ever be very fond of each other,” he replied, with strange bitterness.
“When do you wish to see her, Everard? She is in bed now.”
“Do not disturb her sweet dreams. Our interview can easily wait till to-morrow,” he said, with strange coldness for a man whose nearest tie was this beautiful, neglected daughter.