“And then?” he said, with a catch in his breath.
“I don’t know, father; I was so confused and dizzy with being there so long. All of a sudden they took me away, and the others all came round the bed. And then there was nothing more. Miss Bethune brought me home. I understood that the lady—that my poor—my poor aunt—if that is what she was—was dead. Oh, father, whatever she did, forgive her now!”
Dora for the moment had forgotten everything but the pity and the wonder, which she only now began to realise for the first time, of that strange scene. She saw, as if for the first time, the dark room, the twinkling lights, the ineffable smile upon the dying face: and her big tears fell fast upon her father’s hand, which held hers in a trembling grasp. The quiver that was in him ran through and through her, so that she trembled too.
“Dora,” he said, “perhaps you ought to know, as that man said. The lady was not your aunt: she was your mother—my"—there seemed a convulsion in his throat, as though he could not pronounce the word—“my wife. And yet she was not to blame, as the world judges. I went on a long expedition after you were born, leaving her very young still, and poor. I did not mean her to be poor. I did not mean to be long away. But I went to Africa, which is terrible enough now, but was far more terrible in those days. I fell ill again and again. I was left behind for dead. I was lost in those dreadful wilds. It was more than three years before I came to the light of day at all, and it seemed a hundred. I had been given up by everybody. The money had failed her, her people were poor, the Museum gave her a small allowance as to the widow of a man killed in its service. And there was another man who loved her. They meant no harm, it is true. She did nothing that was wrong. She married him, thinking I was dead.”
“Father!” Dora cried, clasping his arm with both her hands: his other arm supported his head.
“It was a pity that I was not dead—that was the pity. If I had known, I should never have come back to put everything wrong. But I never heard a word till I came back. And she would not face me—never. She fled as if she had been guilty. She was not guilty, you know. She had only married again, which the best of women do. She fled by herself at first, leaving you to me. She said it was all she could do, but that she never, never could look me in the face again. It has not been that I could not forgive her, Dora. No, but we could not look each other in the face again.”
“Is it she,” said Dora, struggling to speak, “whose picture is in your cabinet, on its face? May I take it, father? I should like to have it.”
He put his other arm round her and pressed her close. “And after this,” he said, “my little girl, we will never say a word on this subject again.”
CHAPTER XIX.
The little old gentleman had withdrawn from the apartment of the Mannerings very quietly, leaving all that excitement and commotion behind him; but he did not leave in this way the house in Bloomsbury. He went downstairs cautiously and quietly, though why he should have done so he could not himself have told, since, had he made all the noise in the world, it could have had no effect upon the matter in hand in either case. Then he knocked at Miss Bethune’s door. When he was bidden to enter, he opened the door gently, with great precaution, and going in, closed it with equal care behind him.