XXII.

It was half-past nine o’clock next morning when the man-servant at Sir Anthony Merrick’s in Harley Street brought up to his master’s room a plain hand-written card on which he read the name, “Dolores Barton.”

“Does the girl want to blackmail me?” Sir Anthony thought testily.

The great doctor’s old age was a lonely and a sordid one.  He was close on eighty now, but still to this day he received his patients from ten to one, and closed his shrivelled hand with a clutch on their guineas.  For whom, nobody knew.  Lady Merrick was long dead.  His daughters were well married, and he had quarrelled with their husbands.  Of his two younger sons, one had gone into the Fusiliers and been speared at Suakim; the other had broken his neck on a hunting-field in Warwickshire.  The old man lived alone, and hugged his money-bags.  They were the one thing left for which he seemed to retain any human affection.

So, when he read Dolly’s card, being by nature suspicious, he felt sure the child had called to see what she could get out of him.

But when he descended to the consulting-room with stern set face, and saw a beautiful girl of seventeen awaiting him,—­a tall sunny-haired girl, with Alan’s own smile and Alan’s own eyes,—­he grew suddenly aware of an unexpected interest.  The sun went back on the dial of his life for thirty years or thereabouts, and Alan himself seemed to stand before him.  Alan, as he used to burst in for his holidays from Winchester!  After all, this pink rosebud was his eldest son’s only daughter.

Chestnut hair, pearly teeth, she was Alan all over.

Sir Anthony bowed his most respectful bow, with old-fashioned courtesy.

“And what can I do for you, young lady?” he asked in his best professional manner.

“Grandfather,” the girl broke out, blushing red to the ears, but saying it out none the less; “Grandfather, I’m your granddaughter, Dolores Barton.”

The old man bowed once more, a most deferential bow.  Strange to say, when he saw her, this claim of blood pleased him.

“So I see, my child,” he answered.  “And what do you want with me?”

“I only knew it last night,” Dolly went on, casting down those blue eyes in her shamefaced embarrassment.  “And this morning . . .  I’ve come to implore your protection.”

“That’s prompt,” the old man replied, with a curious smile, half suspicious, half satisfied.  “From whom, my little one?” And his hand caressed her shoulder.

“From my mother,” Dolly answered, blushing still deeper crimson.  “From the mother who put this injustice upon me.  From the mother who, by her own confession, might have given me an honorable birthright, like any one else’s, and who cruelly refused to.”

The old man eyed her with a searching glance.

“Then she hasn’t brought you up in her own wild ideas?” he said.  “She hasn’t dinged them into you!”