“That friend of his, Larry?” she whispered tensely.

“Jimmie Carlisle.”

“O—­oh!”

“I don’t know what Jimmie Carlisle’s motives were for what he has done.  Perhaps to get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father, which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for your father was always his master.  But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly contrary to the orders he received.  If revenge was Old Jimmie’s motive, his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical revenge, one that would hurt your father more.  Till a few years ago, when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie regularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about how splendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people.  And your father—­I knew him in prison—­now believes you have grown up into exactly the kind of young woman he planned.”

“Larry!” she choked in a numbed voice.  “Larry!”

“Your father is now as happy as it is possible for him to be, for he has lived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, the only big thing left for him to do, has come to pass:  that somewhere out in the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome young woman, with a clean, wholesome life before her.  And though she is the one thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again for fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would destroy her happy ignorance.  Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous meaning to your father of what he believes he has created?  And can you conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and the reality?”

She was white, staring, wilted.  For once all the defiance, self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an appalled and frightened young girl.

After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored:  “Is my real father—­still in prison?”

“You’d like to see your real father?” he asked her.

“I think—­I’d like to have a glimpse of him,” she breathed.

Larry, just before this, had noted Joe Ellison in his blue overalls and wide straw hat cleaning out a bank of young dahlias a distance up the bluff.  He now took Maggie’s arm and guided her in that direction.

“See that man there working among the dahlias?—­the man who once brought you a bunch of roses?  Joe Ellison is his name.  He’s the man I’ve been talking about—­your father.”

He felt her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath come in swift, spasmodic pants.  He was wondering what was the effect upon her of this climax of his revelation, when she whispered: 

“Do you suppose—­I can speak—­to my father?”

“Of course.  He likes all young women.  And I told you that he and I were close friends.”

“Then—­come on.”  She arose, clinging to him, and drew him after her.  Halfway to Joe she breathed:  “You please say something first.  Anything.”