“Not angry, my sweet daughter, only sorely disappointed. The match was a fine one even for my daughter, and it was the desire of my heart.”
“I know, I know—and of auntie’s too. I have seen it all along, and I tried so hard. I wished so much to love poor Reggie.”
“It seems strange that you could not—so handsome, so winning, so rich—half the girls in society are setting their caps at him, my dear.”
“They are welcome to him.”
“Don’t say that, Eva, for you may love him yet, as we all wish.”
“Oh, papa, if it could be! But my poor, poor heart, it is too faithful to another,” she dropped her crimson face and wet eyes upon his breast in tender shame.
Softly stroking the golden head, he exclaimed:
“Then you have not forgotten him yet, Eva? the man who deceived you, whom you refused to forgive! If you cared for him so much why send him from you? And can you wish to recall him now?”
In his heart of hearts he had thought Eva wrong to break with her promised husband for the reason she had given, fairly acquitting Doctor Ludington of blood guiltiness in Terry Groves’ death, in his own mind.
But he had not told her so, and he would not now; he could not help a little selfish gladness in getting back the daughter he had been cheated of so long unincumbered by a husband. She thus seemed more entirely his own.