In the next moment
he was thinking of his father's money, and how this girl had emerged from
obscurity to rob him of it.
"You wish to speak to me on business, I am told," she said, in her clear
low voice, wondering at the stranger's silence and deliberate scrutiny of
her face.
"Yes, I have to speak to you on very serious business, Marian," he
answered gravely.
"You are an utter stranger to me, and yet call me by my Christian name."
"I am not an utter stranger to you. Look at me, Mrs. Holbrook. Have you
never seen my face before?"
"Never."
"Are you quite sure of that? Look a little longer before you answer
again."
"Yes!" she cried suddenly, after a long pause. "You are my father!"
There had come back upon her, in a rapid flash of memory, the picture of
a room in Brussels--a room lighted dimly by two wax-candles on the
chimney-piece, where there was a tall dark man who snatched her up in his
arms and kissed her before he went out. She remembered caring very little
for his kisses, and having a childish consciousness of the fact that it
was he who made her mamma cry so often in the quiet lonely evenings, when
the mother and child were together in that desolate continental lodging.
Yet at this moment she was scarcely disposed to think much about her
father's ill-conduct.
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