"You do not know why I dared not speak to my own daughter?" she said, looking up in surprise. "Calabressa did not tell you?"
"No. There were some hints I did not understand."
"Nor of the reasons that forced me to comply with such an inhuman demand? Alas! these reasons exist no longer. I have done my duty to one whose life was sacred to me; now his death has released me from fear; I come to my
daughter now. Ah, when I fold her to my heart, what shall I say to her—what but this?—'Natalushka, if your mother has remained away from you all these years, it was not because she did not love you.'"
He drew his chair nearer, and took her hand.
"I perceive that you have suffered, and deeply. But your daughter will make amends to you. She loves you now; you are a saint to her; your portrait is her dearest possession—"
"My portrait?" she said, looking rather bewildered. "Her father has not forbidden her that, then?"
"It was Calabressa who gave it to her quite recently."
She gently withdrew her hand, and glanced at the table, on which two books lay, and sighed.
"The English tongue is so difficult," she said. "And I have so much—so much—to say! I have written out many things that I wish to tell her; and have repeated them, and repeated them; but the sound is not right—the sound is not like what my heart wishes to say to her."