“I was,” she replied.
“Was!” he echoed, in a bewildered tone.
“When we were poor and struggling,” she continued, “and you were labouring—toiling for the bread we ate, you were my father, for then you were tender, kind, and thoughtful, in all that related to my welfare and to my happiness; then I was your daughter, your child, your own—own Flo’.”
She wiped the welling tears from her eyes.
“You smiled upon me benignly,” she continued, “you spoke to me in accents of soft lovingness, and you made my life, though poverty intermixed with our daily wants and wishes, one of quiet happiness, for you loved me then, and I—I—adored you.”
She paused for a moment. He listened with downcast eyes. She went on—
“Amid our trials, our toils, our sorrows, under our one great affliction—when—when my—my sainted mother——”
A sob burst from her quivering lips. The old man’s head bowed yet lower. Flora, with an effort, controlled her tears and went on.
“When she was taken from us, no sacrifice you could have asked of me I would have ever paused at to make you happy. I would have compressed my heart till it had been pulseless, rather than have interposed my happiness between you and your perfect content. I should have laid down my life with a cry of joy to have seen you without care. This, this, I would have done at a time when—if they would ever—selfish considerations would most have weighed with me, for any change out of our miserable destitution must have been productive of greater comfort at least. The scene, sir, has been changed; the rags of wretchedness have been flung aside, the poor abode has sunk in charred ruins. You are master of lordly domains, and revel in wealth, and—the relation previously subsisting between us has changed also. Almost immediately after our arrival here we ceased to be to each other as father and daughter.”
“Flora!”