“To be cheated out of every sixpence by my own flesh and blood!” he muttered to himself.  “That seems too much for any man to bear.”

The door was opened by a gentle hand presently, and Marian came into the room.  Percival Nowell rose from his seat hastily and stood facing her, surprised by her beauty and an indefinable likeness which she bore to her mother—­a likeness which brought his dead wife’s face back to his mind with a sudden pang.  He had loved her after his own fashion once upon a time, and had grown weary of her and neglected her after the death of that short-lived selfish passion; but something, some faint touch of the old feeling, stirred his heart as he looked at his daughter to-night.  The emotion was as brief as the breath of a passing wind.  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.  She considered only that he was her father, and that they had found each other after long years of separation.  She stretched out her arms, and would have fallen upon his breast; but something in his manner repelled her, something downcast and nervous, which had a chilling effect upon her, and gave her time to remember how little cause she had to love him.  He did not seem aware of the affectionate impulse which had moved her towards him at first.  He gave her his hand presently.  It was deadly cold, and lay loosely in her own.

“I was asking my grandfather about you this morning,” she said, wondering at his strange manner, “but he would not tell me where you were.”

“Indeed!  I am surprised to find you felt so much interest in me; I’m aware that I don’t deserve as much.  Yet I could plead plenty of excuses for my life, if I cared to trouble you with them; but I don’t.  It would be a long story; and when it was told, you might not believe it.  Most men are, more or less, the slave of circumstances.  I have suffered that kind of bondage all my life.  I have known, too, that you were in good hands—­better off in every way than you could have been in my care—­or I should have acted differently in relation to you.”