Profound silence reigned in the room for several minutes, while each occupant was tortured by bitter thoughts.
Virgie could scarcely realize that at last the man who had wrought her father’s ruin was sitting in her presence. She had never seen him but once since that dreadful time when the thunderbolt had fallen to crush them all, and that had been when she had fled from him in the street more than three years previous. She wondered how he had found her now. She had hoped she should never meet him again; she feared him; she abhorred him for the crime and wrong he had committed.
Her heart was even now filled with great bitterness toward him, for, but for him her dear father might have been living, an honored and respected citizen of San Francisco, and she could only remember how he had suffered, how, believing his name forever dishonored, he had fled, as it were, into the wilderness, there to drag out a weary existence among strangers.
A heavy sigh at length aroused her from these unhappy musings, and she glanced at her companion.
She could see that he, too, was sadly changed.
Evidently the last twelve years had been far from happy ones with him. His bowed form, his haggard face and gray hair, all told of a mind ill at ease, of a heart tortured by fear, if not with remorse.
Apparently, too, he had been very ill; he might even be so still, for he was fearfully emaciated, his face was hueless, and he was trembling with either weakness, cold, or emotion, perhaps all three combined.
His coat was drenched in the heavy rain in which he had come, and he looked so utterly wretched and forlorn, that something of pity began to crowd the anger from her heart.
“Uncle Mark,” she said, trying to steady her trembling voice, “you have taken me so by surprise that I am forgetful of my duty. Remove your wet coat, and come nearer the fire, while I ring for a cup of tea and some supper for you.”
“Ah! then you will not turn me out again into the storm. Still you cannot have much but hatred for me in your heart,” he returned, lifting to her a face that was almost convulsed.