“Hedwig, Hedwig!” he cried, “here is your father coming back!” She would not look out, but stood back from the window, turning pale.  If there was one thing she dreaded, it was a meeting with her father.  All the old doubt as to whether she had done right seemed to come back to her face in a moment.  But Nino turned and looked at her, and his face was so triumphant that she got back her courage, and, clasping his hand, bravely awaited what was to come.

I went myself to the door, and heard Lira’s slow tread on the stairs.  Before long he appeared, and glanced up at me from the steps, which he climbed, one at a time, with his stick.

“Is my daughter here?” he asked, as soon as he reached me; and his voice sounded subdued, just as Nino’s did when Benoni had gone, I conducted him into the room.  It was the strangest meeting.  The proud old man bowed stiffly to Hedwig, as though he had never before seen her.  They also bent their heads, and there was a silence as of death in the sunny room.

“My daughter,” said Von Lira at last, and with evident effort, “I wish to have a word with you.  These two gentlemen—­the younger of whom is now, as I understand it, your husband—­may well hear what I wish to say.”

I moved a chair so that he might sit down, but he stood up to his full height, as though not deigning to be older than the rest.  I watched Hedwig, and saw how with both hands she clung to Nino’s arm, and her lip trembled, and her face wore the look it had when I saw her in Fillettino.

As for Nino, his stern, square jaw was set, and his brow bent, but he showed no emotion, unless the darkness in his face and the heavy shadows beneath his eyes foretold ready anger.

“I am no trained, reasoner, like Signor Grandi,” said Lira, looking straight at Hedwig, “but I can say plainly what I mean, for all that.  There was a good old law in Sparta, whereby disobedient children were put to death without mercy.  Sparta was a good country,—­very like Prussia, but less great.  You know what I mean.  You have cruelly disobeyed me,—­cruelly, I say, because you have shown me that all my pains and kindness and discipline have been in vain.  There is nothing so sorrowful for a good parent as to discover that he has made a mistake.”

(The canting old proser, I thought, will he never finish?)

“The mistake I refer to is not in the way I have dealt with you,” he went on, “for on that score I have nothing to reproach myself.  But I was mistaken in supposing you loved me.  You have despised all I have done for you.”

“Oh, father!  How can you say that?” cried poor Hedwig, clinging closer to Nino.

“At all events, you have acted as though you did.  On the very day when I promised you to take signal action upon Baron Benoni you left me by stealth, saying in your miserable letter that you had gone to a man who could both love and protect you.”

“You did neither the one nor the other, sir,” said Nino, boldly, “when you required of your daughter to marry such a man as Benoni.”