They groped their way down, and entered the room.
"Many a worse crib than this," said Pringle, as he turned the gas full on.
Then he stirred the fire, and drew a chair up for his daughter and another for himself, and produced a bottle of brandy.
"And now for a comfortable little confab," he said, gleefully. "I've quite a lot to tell you, dear; and I dare say you have something to tell me."
"Suppose you tell me your news first," said the woman.
Neither in her manner towards him, nor in her mode of addressing him, was there the slightest trace of tenderness, or any token by which a stranger would have guessed that the man before her was her father, whom she had not spoken to for several years. Her hard mouth and her watchful eyes never for a moment relaxed their hardness or their watchfulness.
"Funny, wasn't it," began Pringle, rubbing his lean, yellow hands in front of the fire, but with his eyes fixed on his daughter, "that I should have been Van Duren's clerk for three years before finding out who he was?"
"And how did you find it out at last?" asked Jessie, without any apparent emotion. "I was rooting about among his papers one day, when I found some of your letters, my dear. It was the greatest surprise I've ever had in my life."
"He has kept my letters, has he?" said the woman, in an eager, passionate way, breaking for a moment through the restraint she had hitherto put upon herself.
"He has kept them; so much the worse for him, as things have turned out," said Pringle, grimly.