"My dear," he said. She frowned slightly, but her lips parted with a cold smile that came out of her heart.
"My dear child, it is hard for me to say this to you, for I feel that you can but regard me a feelingless monster that would rend an innocent and loving heart, and God knows that I now beg your forgiveness, but in this life cruel things must be done, done that those who come after us may feel no sting of reproach cast by an exacting society. I am an old man, my dear, and shall soon be taken to the burial ground where my fathers sleep in honor. They left me a proud name and I must not soil it. The oldest stone there is above a breast that braved old Cromwell's pikemen—the noble heart of a cavalier beat in that bosom—and can you ask——"
"I have asked nothing, General."
"You are a noble young woman."
"But your son will come to me and kneel at my feet."
A flush flew over the General's face. "No, it is with his full consent that I have come. Indeed, I would have put off my coming until a more befitting day, but he knew his duty and bade me do mine."
"He will kneel at my feet," she said; and he had not replied when we heard footsteps in the passage—wild footsteps. There was a moment of sharp clicking at the door latch, as if a nervous hand had touched it, and then Millie broke into the room. Her face was white, her hair hung about her shoulders.
"You have kept me away!" she cried, stamping her feet and frowning at her father. "Yes, you have kept me away, but I have come and I hate you."
The old General was stupefied. "You may tell your cold-blooded son what to do," she went on, "but my heart is my own. He asked me to marry him and I will—I will break into the penitentiary and marry him. And you would have had me marry Dan Stuart. Just before he was killed he told me he would kill Alf if I said I loved him. I will go to the jail and marry him there."
She ran to Guinea, and they put their arms about each other and wept; and the old woman pressed her book to her bosom and sobbed over it. Through old Lim's wire-like beard a smile, hard and cynical, was creeping out, and the General was fiercely struggling with himself. He had bitten his lip until his mouth was reddening with blood.