“Willingly, sir,” bowed Dora. “I am sure it will be good advice.”
“Never anything else,” declared Nick heartily. “Will you also confide in me?”
“I think so, sir, if you require it.”
“Oh, I shall not ask you to tell me very much that I do not already know,” said Nick, with a sort of paternal fondness. “How did you happen to overhear the interview yonder? I’m sure you did not deliberately play the eavesdropper.”
“Indeed, no; I would not have done that.”
“You were——”
“I was reading in the shade of the shrubbery near-by, and when they began speaking——”
“You literally could not move, eh?” Nick again interposed. “Ah, well, I saw that the disclosure quite overwhelmed you, and perhaps it was all for the best.”
“Best, sir? Oh, how can that be? If Mr. Flood is as bad as—as——”
“As your worthy father really implied, he would be a very bad man, indeed,” laughed Nick quietly. “But your good father is both right and wrong, Miss Royal. There are far worse men than Moses Flood, my dear girl; and if he were to throw up his miserable vocation, which he intimated he intended doing for your sake, he would be a man whose hand I would grasp as a friend and brother.”