"My poor child! you have neither a mother nor a father," said the major, with a returning pressure of the hand.
Janet sighed.
"I am no poorer off than I imagined myself to be," she said quietly.
"I have not told you all. Unknown to you, unknown to your mother, your father has been alive all these years. He was living at the time your mother died, and had not our search for him been delayed so long after that event, he would have learnt that he had a daughter grown up to woman's estate whom he had never seen, and who had never seen him. But when George found him he was deaf to all earthly sounds. Poverina mia, your father died nine days ago."
On Janet's face, as the major said those words, came a look of pain and bewilderment pitiful to see.
"Poor, poor papa!" she murmured. "Only two short weeks ago, and I might have seen him and spoken to him, and have told him how dearly I would love him. If we had but known! If we had but known!"
She was crying quietly and pitifully by this time, in a way that made the old soldier's heart ache to witness.
"Great heaven! what a treasure that man missed when he missed the love of this dear child," said the major to himself.
"You must please tell me all about it," said Janet after a little while. "What you have just stated seems so utterly strange to me, that at present I can hardly realize the fact that I have not really been the fatherless girl I have all along believed myself to be. Ah! dear Major Strickland, how much I owe to you and other kind friends! Had it not been for your efforts in my behalf, I should never have known what you have told me to-day."
"It would perhaps have been as well for your peace of mind if you never had known it."