She looked at him intently, and interpreting the expression he added: 

“You wish to ask me something?  Am I so very frightful that you dare not question me?”

“Will you tell me the truth, if I ask you?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Mr. Palma, when shall I see my mother?”

His eyes went down helplessly before the girl’s steady gaze, and he hesitated a moment.

“Really, I cannot tell exactly,—­but I hope——­”

She put up her small hand quickly, with a gesture that silenced him.

“Don’t say any more, please.  I never want to know half of anything, and you can’t tell me all.  Good-night, Mr. Palma.”

She shut her eyes.

This man of bronze who could terrify witnesses, torture and overwhelm the opposition, and thunder so successfully from the legal rostrum, sat there abashed by the child’s tone and manner, and as he watched her he could not avoid smiling at her imperious mandate.  Although silent, it was one o’clock before she fell into a deep, sound slumber, and then the lawyer leaned forward and studied the dreamer.

The light from the lamp shone upon her, and the long silky black lashes lay heavily on her white cheeks.  Now and then a sigh passed her lips, and once a dry sob shook her frame, as if she were again passing through the painful ordeal of parting; but gradually the traces of emotion disappeared, and that marvellous peace which we find only in children’s countenances, or on the faces of the dead,—­and which is nowhere more perfect than in old Greek statuary,—­settled like a benediction over her features.  Her frail hands clasped over her breast still held the faded lilies, and to Erle Palma she seemed too tender and fair for rude contact with the selfish world, in which he was so indefatigably carving out fame and fortune.  He wondered how long a time would be requisite to transform this pure, spotless, ingenuous young thing into one of the fine fashionable miniature women with frizzed hair and huge paniers, whom he often met in the city, with school-books in their hands, and bold, full-blown coquetry in their eyes?

Certainly he was as devoid of all romantic weakness as the propositions of Euclid, or the pages of Blackstone, but something in the beauty and helpless innocence of the sleeper appealed with unwonted power to his dormant sympathy, and, suspecting that lurking spectres crouched in her future, he mutely entered into a compact with his own soul, not to lose sight of, but to befriend her faithfully, whenever circumstances demanded succour.

“Upon my word, she looks like a piece of Greek sculpture, and be her father whom he may, there is no better blood than beats there at her little dimpled wrists.  The pencilling of the eyebrows is simply perfect.”