“Heavens! Then you think that he will not come back?”
Schumacker made no answer. The young girl repeated her question in an anxious and beseeching tone.
“Did he not promise to return?” said the old man, curtly.
“Yes, to be sure!” eagerly answered Ethel.
“Well, how can you reckon upon his coming, then? Is he not a man? I believe that the vulture will return to a dead body, but I have no faith in the return of spring when the year is on the wane.”
Ethel, seeing that her father had relapsed into his wonted melancholy, took courage; the voice of her young and virginal soul proudly denied the old man’s morbid philosophy.
“Father,” she said firmly, “Lord Ordener will return; he is not like other men.”
“What do you know about it, girl?”
“What you know yourself, my lord and father.”
“I know nothing,” said the old man. “I heard words from a man, and they promised the actions of a god.” Then he added, with a bitter smile: “I have weighed them well, and I see that they are too beautiful to be true.”