"But, child, you are talking nonsense!"
"When I try to think it out, it goes away for a little while; but then it comes back again."
"Really, Eva, you must not talk so foolishly. After all, what is this story you have told me; what does it all mean? It comes and it goes, and it stays away, and then again it comes and goes."
She shook her head sadly, sitting on the floor at his feet in front of the fire.
"No, no," she said, very positively. "You do not understand, you are a man; you do not understand all there is in a woman. We women are quite different. But you will speak to him, will you not, and ask him all about it?"
"No, Eva; that I certainly will not. Frank might very well ask me what business it was of mine. You know as well as I do that every man has, or has had, acquaintance among such women. There is nothing in that. And Frank strikes me as too honorable to have anything to do with one of them now that he is engaged to you. I know him too well to imagine that. It is really too silly of you—do you hear: too silly!"
She began to sob passionately, and moan in an overpowering fit of grief. She wrung her hands, rocking herself from side to side, as if suffering intolerable torments.
"Oh, papa!" she entreated. "Dear papa, do, do! Do this for your child's sake, your little Eva. Go to him, talk to him. I am so unhappy, I can not bear it, I am so wretched! Speak to him; I can not speak of such a matter. T am only a girl, and it is all so horrible, so sickening. Oh, papa, papa, do speak to Frank!"
She tried to lean coaxingly against his knees, but he stood up; her tears angered him and made him more obstinate. His wife had never got anything from him by tears; quite the reverse. Eva was silly and childish. He could not recognize his spirited daughter—always indefatigable and bright —with whom he had traveled half over the world, in this crushed creature dissolved in woe.
"Stand up, Eva," he said, sternly. "Do not crouch on the floor. You will end by vexing me seriously with your folly. What are you crying for? For nothing, pure foolish imagining. I will have no more of it. You must behave reasonably. Get up, stand up."
She dragged herself to her feet, groaning as she did so, with a white face and clenched hands.
"I can not help it," she said. "It is my nature, I suppose. Have you no pity for your child, even if you do not understand her? Oh, go and speak to him—only a few words, I implore you—I beseech you."
"No, no, no!" he cried, stamping his foot, his face quite red as if from a congestion of rage at all this useless, undefined vexation, and his daughter's folly, and weeping and entreaties, which his obstinacy urged him on no account to indulge. She however rose, looking taller in her despair; her eyes had a strange look as they gazed into her father's.
''Then you will not speak to Frank? You will not do that much for me?"
"No. It is all nonsense, I tell you. Worry me about it no more."
"Very well. Then, I must do it," she said gravely, as if pronouncing some irrevocable decision. And very slowly, without looking round, without bidding him good-night, she left the room. It was as though Sir Archibald was a total stranger, as though there were no bond of tenderness between her and her father—nothing but the hostility of two antagonistic natures. No; under their superficial afifection they had had no feeling in common; they had never really known, never tried to understand each other; she had no sympathy with his old age; he had none with her youth. They were miles asunder; a desert, a pathless waste, lay between them. They dwelt apart as completely as though they were locked up in two shrines, where each worshiped a different God.
"He is my father," thought she, as she went along the passage. "I am his child."
She could not understand it. It was a mystery of nature that scarcely seemed possible. He— her father, she—his child; and yet he could not feel her anguish—could not see that it was anguish —called it folly and fancy. And a vehement longing for her mother rose up in her heart. She would have understood!
"Mamma, mamma!" she sobbed out. "01;i mamma, come back. Tell me what I can do. Come as a ghost; I will not be afraid of you. I am so forlorn, so miserable—so miserable! Come and haurK me; come, only come!"
In her room, in the darkness, she watched for the ghost. But it came not. The night hung unbroken, like a black curtain, behind which there was nothing but emptiness.
CHAPTER XVII
When Frank came to call next morning, he at once saw in her face that she was greatly agitated.
"What is the matter, dearest?" he asked.
At first she felt weak. There was something so terrible—and then again so shocking—but she commanded herself; she drew herself up in her pretty self-will, which gave firmness to the childlike enthusiasm and womanly coyness of her nature, like a sterner background against which so much that was soft and tender stood out. And, feeling above all that she stood alone, abandoned by her father, she was determined to be firm.
"Frank, I have no alternative," she began, with the energy of despair. "I must talk matters over with you. Even before
