“Come to me at five this afternoon. I am not fit to talk more with you now,” was the tremulous reply, and the man moved weakly away, seeming more like a person eighty years of age than like the upright, distinguished-looking individual of fifty, whom the young couple had met a few moments before.
CHAPTER XXV.
GEOFFREY PICKS UP A THREAD.
“Who can he be? How strangely he acts,” Gladys said, as she gazed after the retreating form. “One would almost believe he has some personal connection with your history, he was so agitated on learning your name.”
“I am sure that he has, Gladys; I believe that man is my father!” Geoffrey replied, with quivering lips.
“Oh, Geoff!”
“I do, dear; and I fear, too, that there is some miserable secret connected with my early life.”
“Do not think that,” the beautiful girl pleaded; “I will not believe it without the strongest proof; and even if it should be so, the fact cannot harm you.”
“Gladys,” Geoffrey said, in a stern, repressed tone, while his face was dreadful to look upon in its ghastliness, “if there is sin connected with my life—if I find that my birthright is one of shame—I can never ask you to share it.”
Gladys clasped both hands closely about her lover’s arm.
“Geoffrey, surely you will not ruin both our lives by any such rash decision?” she pleaded, lifting her troubled face to his. “It is you whom I love, not an illustrious pedigree. As far as my future with you is concerned, I care not who or what your parents may have been. Do not let anything of that nature come between us; it is false pride, and unworthy of you.”