When at last I came
to see my father, he told me. He had written of his idol before; but it
was not till I came that he told it all to me. Do you know what I felt?
While his daughter was dancing cotillions, a stranger had taken his hand--
and--" A sob rose in her throat and checked her utterance for a moment;
but she threw up her head and met his eyes proudly. "Gratitude, Mr.
Harkless!" she cried. "I am James Fisbee's daughter."
He fell back from the bench with a sharp exclamation, and stared at her
through the gray twilight. She went on hurriedly, again not looking at
him:
"When you showed me that you cared for me--when you told me that you did--
I--do you think I wanted to care for you? I wanted to do something to show
you that I could be ashamed of my vile neglect of him--something to show
you his daughter could be grateful. If I had loved you, what I did would
have been for that--and I could not have done it. And how could I have
shown my gratitude if I had done it for love? And it has been such dear,
happy work, the little I have done, that it seems, after all, that I have
done it for love of myself. But--but when you first told me--" She broke
off with a strange, fluttering, half inarticulate little laugh that was
half tears; and then resumed in another tone: "When you told me you cared
that night--that night we were here--how could I be sure? It had been only
two days, you see, and even if I could have been sure of myself, why, I
couldn't have told you.
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