"My child, I know your meaning. I will not tear the letter to pieces and trample it under foot. God forgive me my life's slight to those words. But I learned their value last night, in the house where your blank letter had entered before me."
She started, and looked into his face steadfastly, while a bright scarlet shot into her own.
"I know all, Netty,—all. Your secret was well kept, but it is yours and mine now. It was well done, darling, well done. O, I have been through strange mysteries of thought and life since that starving woman sat here! Well—thank God!"
"Father, what have you done?" The flush had failed, but a glad color still brightened her face, while the tears stood trembling in her eyes.
"All that you wished yesterday," he answered. "And all that you ever could have wished, henceforth I will do."
"O father!" She stopped. The bright scarlet shot again into her face, but with an April shower of tears, and the rainbow of a smile.
"Listen to me, Netty, and I will tell you, and only you, what I have done." Then, while she mutely listened, sitting by his side, and the dawn of Christmas broadened into Christmas day, he told her all.
And when he had told all, and emotion was stilled, they sat together in silence for a time, she with her innocent head drooped upon his shoulder, and her eyes closed, lost in tender and mystic reveries; and he musing with a contrite heart. Till at last, the stir of daily life began to waken in the quiet dwelling, and without, from steeples in the frosty air, there was a sound of bells.
They rose silently, and stood, clinging to each other, side by side.
"Love, we must part," he said, gravely and tenderly. "Read me, before we go, the closing lines of George Feval's letter. In the spirit of this let me strive to live. Let it be for me the lesson of the day. Let it also be the lesson of my life."