She looked up.
"No one sent me. I—I wished to see you—before we went away; because you are my father—and I mightn't ever see you—if I didn't now. And I wanted to ask you"—her voice quivered—"not to be angry any more with mother and me. We never meant to vex you—by coming. But we were so poor—and mother is ill. Yes, she is ill!—she is—it's no shamming. Won't you forgive us?—won't you give mother a little more money?—and won't you"—she clasped her hands entreatingly—"won't you give me a dot? I may want to be married—and you are so rich? And I wouldn't ever trouble you again—I—"
She broke off, intimidated, paralyzed by the strange fixed look of the old wizard before her—his flowing hair, his skullcap, his white and sunken features. And yet mysteriously she recognized herself in him. She realized through every fibre that he was indeed her father.
"You would have done better not to trouble me again!" said Melrose, with slow emphasis. "Your mother seems to pay no attention whatever to what I say. We shall see. So you want a dot? And, pray, what do you want a dot for? Who's going to marry you? Tatham?"
The tone was more mocking than fierce; but Felicia shrank under it.
"Oh, no, no! But I might want to marry," she added piteously. "And in
Italy—one can't marry—without a dot!"
"Your mother should have thought of these things when she ran away."
Felicia was silent a moment. Then, without invitation, she seated herself on the edge of a chair that stood near him.
"That was so long ago," she said timidly—yet confidingly. "And I was a baby. Couldn't you—couldn't you forget it now?"
Melrose surveyed her.