"I am his daughter."
"His--daughter? Thank you; thank you."
He sank on to a chair as one who had been dealt a crushing blow. Nora's bearing was frigid; the stranger's unexpected question had touched in her a chord of memory which hurt her more than she would have cared to say. She returned to Mr. Hooper.
"Can you tell me what that sentence is? One or two of the words seem quite illegible."
He explained, to the best of his ability, which was not much greater than hers. When she had gone back to her own apartment, Mr. Hooper said to his visitor, with what was possibly meant to be an air of politeness--
"May I venture to inquire if that is how you generally behave when you're introduced to a lady, Frank? because if it is I shall know better than to attempt to introduce you to another."
Mr. Clifford's reply was remarkable.
"I told you that when I first saw her I felt as if I had seen a ghost; now I know my instinct was right; I have seen a ghost. If you knew--what I know, and had had to go through what I've had to go through, and still have to go through, you would understand how meeting Donald Lindsay's daughter like this makes it seem to me as if the hand of God had been stretched out of the skies."