He is afraid to tell
his father; he is even afraid _you_ might be angry with him. There is
nobody to speak for us, except--except me. Oh, don't let him go! Don't
for his sake--" she whispered the next words in a kiss--"Don't for
Mine!"
Her father's kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair head
tenderly. "Hush, my love," he said, almost in a whisper; "hush!" She
little knew what a revelation every word, every action that escaped her,
now opened before him. She had made him her grown-up playfellow, from
her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks, she
had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long enough
separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced
on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him
that she was a taller child in later years--and had taught him little
more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a
woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre
ssed against his; in the nervous thrill of her arms clasped around
his neck. The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a woman--with the
master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart already!
"Have you thought long of this, my dear?" he asked, as soon as he could
speak composedly.
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