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Everett, when consulted, shook his head and tried to discourage the widow from a task which he was afraid might prove beyond her strength. But Mrs. Blaine was not to be put off so easily. Since their father's death, she had let the girls have much their own way, but this time she was determined. It would be a labor of love, she insisted. Daddie, himself, would have wished it.
It haunted me constantly that his entreaty that my father should not come to London was a bad sign, and that he would never face such another return home. And was I justified in keeping all this to myself, when my father's presence might save him from the flight that would indeed be the surrender of his character, and to the life of a common sailor?
The intendant kissed his daughter, and she left the room. Poor Patience! she was glad to be left to herself, and think over this strange communication. For many days she had felt how fond she had been of Edward, much more so than she had believed herself to be. "And now," she thought, "if he really loves me, and hears my father's explanation, he will come back again."
At last he said firmly: "Yet you must part from him. He or I! I will have nothing to do with the lover of my father's wife. I am Adam's son, and will be constant to him. Ah, mother, I have been deprived of you so long. You can tend strangers' orphaned children, yet you make your own son an orphan. Will you do this? No, a thousand times, no, you cannot! Do not weep so, you must not weep!
"And now will you show me my room?" Miss Rose led the way upstairs and threw open the door; Lord Fairmount, pausing on the threshold, gazed at it disparagingly. "Is this the best room you have?" he inquired, stiffly. "Oh, no," said Miss Rose, smiling; "father's room is much better than this. Look here."
"I will, Vick, dear.... It makes no difference to me what happens, if you are only happy!" As he drove to his father's house in the damp April night, he tried to think of the steps he must take on the morrow. He had acted irresistibly, out of the depths of his nature, unconcerned that he was about to tear in pieces the fabric of his life.
The grim New Englander saw him depart with eyes that, although tearless, were full of agony, also of hatred of all that threatened to cost him so much. His worst fears were fulfilled, for his son was drowned in a night attack on Fort Sumter, and, in his father's morbid fancy, still lay in the mud and ooze at the bottom of Charleston harbor.
On June 25 1765 I arrived at my father's house: and the five years and a half between my travels and my father's death are the portion of my life which I passed with the least enjoyment, and which I remember with the least satisfaction.
But his fierce dog and his own manner had kept all obtrusive curiosity at a distance. Now she saw her father's worst fears and surmises realized.
If it had been merely a matter of reward or even promotion, I think I would have refused the task, but it was a question of obliging my father's friend, who had welcomed me with so much kindness, so I said that I would be ready to go in an hour's time.
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