"Send me away if you like—perhaps I was stupid to come—but I wanted—I wanted—I couldn't bear it any longer—I'm all alone—father! I'm Louie—Louie——"
Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was his daughter—his daughter——
And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life. He repeated the phrase after her.
"Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said.
"Yes, I live there——"
"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"
"Mortlake Road."
Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "The Bible, Miss?" Now he said to his daughter:
"The Mortlake Road?"
"I suppose so."