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"She will not tell me who killed mamma." The man's ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white and pitiful. "God took her away, my darling," he said with a sob. "She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in heaven," "And Leam's mamma? Is she in heaven too with the angels?" asked Fina, opening her eyes wide through their tears,
She was black-haired, heavy-browed, squish-nosed, moled, and swarthy, and she had a beard and moustache far beyond the stage of incipiency. Yet those two British seamen, fairly decent men, neither drunk nor brutish, could not have been more attracted had 'Fina had the beauty of the Mona Lisa herself. I may add that there were other women handy and that the seamen knew of them.
He had fallen into talk more intimate than he wished; and while the guest was uttering something polite about the nobility of missionary work, he placed him in an easy-chair and sought aguardiente for his immediate refreshment. Since the year's beginning there had been no guest for him to bring into his rooms, or to sit beside him in the high seats at table, set apart for the gente fina.
"Heyday! what's all this about?" he cried. "What's the matter, my little Fina? what are you crying for? Tut, tut! you should not cry like this, darling; and, Leam," severely, "you should really keep the child better amused and happy. She is as good as gold with me: with you there is always something wrong." Fina ran into his arms sobbing. "Leam is cross," she said.
"You say what is not true, Fina," said Leam gravely, trembling as much as Josephine, though her eyes were dry and she did not sob. "You fell in because you would not let me hold you." "You pushed me in, and I hate you," reiterated Fina, cowering close to the bosom of her warm, soft friend.
The dead mother is as much a matter of wondering inquiry as the angels and the stars; and Fina's imagination was beginning to bestir itself on the mysteries of childish life. "I have nothing to tell you about her," said Leam, controlling herself, though she still shivered. "Yes, you have everything," insisted Fina. "Was mamma pretty?" playing with a corner of her sister's ribbon.
Just then Fina laid her fresh sweet lips against Edgar's, and he kissed her with a strange thrill of tenderness. "Why, Edgar, I never saw you take so to a child before," cried Mrs.
And as a purchaser, the final cause of whose existence seemed to have been the unquestioning possession of Ford House, came suddenly on the scene and took the whole thing as it stood, Sebastian and his wife left the place, taking Fina with them, and migrated to Paris to finish their interrupted honeymoon.
Even Leam, with all the unspoken yearnings, the formless hopes, of youth stirring in her heart, thought how pleasant it would be to go to sleep among the flowers and wake up only when she had found mamma in heaven; while Fina, dazzled by the rank luxuriance before her, ran forward to the water's edge with a shrill cry of delight.
She was kneeling by her brother's side caressing Fina. She always made love to the little girl: it was one of her methods of making love to the father. "Is she like her mother?" asked Edgar in the same low tones, looking at the child critically. "A little," answered Josephine "not much. It is odd, is it not, that she should be more like me?"
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