"H'm--so they've sent _you_ here?"
She looked up.
"No one sent me. I--I wished to see you--before we went away; because you
are my father--and I mightn't ever see you--if I didn't now. And I wanted
to ask you"--her voice quivered--"not to be angry any more with mother
and me. We never meant to vex you--by coming. But we were so poor--and
mother is ill. Yes, she _is_ ill!--she is--it's no shamming. Won't you
forgive us?--won't you give mother a little more money?--and won't
you"--she clasped her hands entreatingly--"won't you give me a _dot_? I
may want to be married--and you are so rich? And I wouldn't ever trouble
you again--I--"
She broke off, intimidated, paralyzed by the strange fixed look of the
old wizard before her--his flowing hair, his skullcap, his white and
sunken features. And yet mysteriously she recognized herself in him. She
realized through every fibre that he was indeed her father.
"You would have done better not to trouble me again!" said Melrose, with
slow emphasis. "Your mother seems to pay no attention whatever to what I
say. We shall see. So you want a _dot_? And, pray, what do you want a
_dot_ for? Who's going to marry you? Tatham?"
The tone was more mocking than fierce; but Felicia shrank under it.
"Oh, no, _no_! But I _might_ want to marry," she added piteously. "And in
Italy--one can't marry--without a _dot_!"
"Your mother should have thought of these things when she ran away."
Felicia was silent a moment.
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