"Indeed it is, papa," she replied, proudly, "one of your old cloaks: I had it altered by our tailor in Zalow, because it reminds me of old times." And this was all she could bring herself to say of the myriad charming and loving phrases she had prepared. "It is a great success, my coat. Do you not like it?" she asked.
"Candidly, no;" he made reply. "Nevertheless I am greatly obliged to it for proving to me that, even in the clumsiest and ugliest garment ever devised by human hands to disfigure one of God's creatures, my daughter is still charming."
She cast down her eyes with a little blush and was suddenly ashamed of her threadbare adaptation of which she had been so proud. Kindly, but still with some hesitation, he put his hand upon her shoulder and said, "You will let me look a little more closely at my daughter."
A warm wave of affection suddenly surged up in her heart.
"Do not look at me, papa; only love me," she exclaimed, and, throwing her arm around his neck, she nestled close to him. "You cannot imagine how rejoiced I was to come to you."
And the poor wretch reverently bent his sad, weary head above his child's golden curls, and repentantly acknowledged to himself that he had not deserved so great mercy.
When daylight had faded and the lanterns at the base of the old palaces flared up, casting reddish reflections to break and glimmer upon the surface of the lagunes, the colonel lit the lamp and put paper and writing-materials upon the table before Stella.
"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand. At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's finances?"
"Low," said Stella, laconically.