“Oh, Morgan, how could you believe that—that? Why, Hilary Tempest is still paying attention to that Miller heiress. People say he is waiting for her to get old enough to be married.”
I gasped for breath, but the relief was, after all, only momentary.
“Then—it’s some other man; even if I don’t know him, I hate him all the same, and he shall answer to me for being a brute,” I declared, savagely.
“No, no, you must not—I forbid it, Morgan. Let the past be forgotten—I shall never see poor papa again, I solemnly promise you.”
“Who?” I almost shouted.
“Why, Morgan, you frighten me. It was papa—you know we thought him dead—he ran away, oh, ever so many years ago with a bold, bad woman, and mamma buried him—but he found me out, and I was so lonely I forgave him and loved him. That is all—he deceived me, poor, weak old papa.”
CHAPTER XX.
I TRY TO BRIDGE THE CHASM.
There sometimes come momentous epochs in the lives of men when it seems difficult to believe they are not dreaming.
Such a dazzling event had come to pass in my own experience.