He grew suddenly angry.

“Child, don’t stare at me like that!” he exclaimed, with all an old man’s petulance.  “It doesn’t matter what I said—­I had to let the neighbours think you were mine—­”

A light flashed in upon her, and she gave vent to a shuddering cry.

“Dad!  Oh, Dad!”

Gripping both arms of his chair he raised himself into an upright posture.

“What now?” he demanded, almost fiercely—­“What trouble are you going to make of it?”

“Oh, if it were only trouble,” she exclaimed, forlornly.  “It’s far worse!  You’ve branded me with shame!  Oh, I understand now!  I understand at last why the girls about here never make friends with me!  I understand why Robin seems to pity me so much!  Oh, how shall I ever look people in the face again!”

His fuzzy brows met in a heavy frown.

“Little fool!” he said, roughly,—­“What shame are you talking of?  I see no shame in laying claim to a child of my own, even though the claim has no reality.  Look at the thing squarely!  Here comes a strange man with a baby and leaves it on my hands.  You know what a scandalous, gossiping little place this is,—­and it was better to say at once the baby was mine than leave it to the neighbours to say the same thing and that I wouldn’t acknowledge it.  Not a soul about here would have believed the true story if I had told it to them.  I’ve done everything for the best—­I know I have.  And there’ll never be a word said if you marry Robin.”

Her face had grown very white.  She put up her hand to her head and her fingers touched the faded wreath of wild roses.  She drew it off and let it drop to the ground.

“I shall never marry Robin!” she said, with quiet firmness—­“And I will not be considered your illegitimate child any longer.  It’s cruel of you to have made me live on a lie!—­yes, cruel!—­though you’ve been so kind in other things.  You don’t know who my parents were—­you’ve no right to think they were not honest!”

He stared at her amazed.  For the first time in eighteen years he began to see the folly of what he had thought his own special wisdom.  This girl, with her pale sad face and steadfast eyes, confronted him with the calm reproachful air of an accusing angel.

“What right have you?” she went on.  “The man who brought me to you,—­poor wretched me!—­if he was my father, may have been good and true.  He said I was motherless; and he, or someone else, sent you money for me till I was twelve.  That did not look as if I was forgotten.  Now you say the money has stopped—­well!—­my father may be dead.”  Her lips quivered and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.  “But there is nothing in all this that should make you think me basely born,—­nothing that should have persuaded you to put shame upon me!”

He was taken aback for a minute by her words and attitude—­then he burst out angrily: