"I thought you were my
father," she said in a weak voice of mingled disappointment, anger and
shame.
"And I thought you were my mother," was all the guilty wretch could
offer in extenuation of his conduct.
The people whose parts this unfortunate pair had been playing with
such ill success were now heard at the door below. Allan felt like a
criminal as he stole into the hall, and thence into his own room; but
the Commodore could scarcely understand the propriety of a strange and
otherwise objectionable young man holding a moonless _tete-a-tete_
with his daughter. In any case his presence would involve disagreeable
explanations. If her cheeks were as flushed as his own no doubt her
doting parent would ascribe it to renewed health and strength.
But the young man, sitting alone in the perfumed darkness of that
summer night, with his hot head fallen upon the window-sill, did not
imagine that the fire that burned along his own veins was an
indication of health. On the contrary, he feared it the symptom of a
dreaded disease--the fever and delirium of love. What was that little
yellow-haired girl to him? Nothing! nothing! Yet her kisses burned
upon his lips, and every drop of blood in his body seemed to
contradict his nonchalant nothing with a passionate everything! Yes,
she was in truth the lamp of his life, but in that radiant light how
pitiful his life appeared.
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