Those, Lali, are his very words."
His hand closed on hers, he reached out and took the other hand, from
which the paper fluttered, and clasped both tight in his own firm grasp.
"My daughter," he said, "you have another father." With a low cry, like
that of a fawn struck in the throat, she slid forward on her knees beside
him, and buried her face on his arm. She understood. Her father was
dead. Mrs. Armour came forward, and, kneeling also, drew the dark head
to her bosom. Then that flood came which sweeps away the rust that
gathers in the eyes and breaks through the closed dikes of the heart.
Hours after, when she had fallen into a deep sleep, General Armour and
his wife met outside her bedroom door.
"I shall not leave her," Mrs. Armour said. "Send for Frank. His time
has almost come."
But it would not have come so soon had not something else occurred. The
day that he came back from Scotland he entered his wife's room, prepared
for a change in her, yet he did not find so much to make him happy as he
had hoped.
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