"Do you mean to say that I love you as my daughter or child?"
"Yes, Cornelius."
"Do you mean to say that you love me as your father?"
"Yes, Cornelius."
His voice rose and rang with each question; mine sank with every reply.
He darted at me a look of the keenest reproach.
"Never," he exclaimed, with a fire and vehemence that startled me, "never have I loved you, or shall I love you so; never for a second in the past; never for a second in the future; never, Daisy, never!" And turning from me, he paced the room with hasty steps, a flushed brow, and angry look.
At length he stopped before me; for, being somewhat calmer, the fire of his look seemed more earnest and concentrated, the accents of his voice more measured and deep. He said:
"Confess you have been jesting."
"No, Cornelius, I spoke as I thought."
"And you thought that I liked you, as a father likes his child; I defy you to prove it! Since I returned from Italy, have I not done all I could to show you that your esteem, approbation, praise, and love were dearer to me than language could express? Have I not, through all our old familiarity, say, have I not mingled reserve and respect with all my tenderness? Have I not acknowledged the woman in you, and that in a hundred ways? The love of a father? I defy you to prove it, Daisy!"
He again paced the room with angry steps. I followed him, and laying my hand on his arm, I said earnestly--
"Cornelius, you should not be angry with me. Have you forgotten that, before you went to Italy, you called me your adopted child? that in your letters you addressed me thus? That on the very evening of your return, when Kate seemed vexed about it, you were not displeased, though you are so angry now?"
Cornelius turned a little pale.
"I had forgotten it," he said bitterly, "but you forget nothing--nothing; years pa.s.s, and words spoken in the heedlessness of ignorance and the presumptuousness of youth, still live in your pitiless memory."
"Cornelius," I said, gently, "is it a sin to remember the truth?"
"The truth!" he echoed, indignantly, "do not call that the truth. I may have said it, been fool enough to have believed it, but true it has never been. Never, I tell you, never have I felt for you one spark of the affection a father feels for his child, never. Do not think, dream, or imagine such a thing. I deny it in every way in which man can deny. I would, were it in my power, efface from your mind every such remembrance of a past, beyond which we both should look."
I began to feel startled. What did Cornelius mean? Why did he object so pertinaciously to a matter like this? I looked up at him and said earnestly--
"Cornelius, I do not understand at all why you are so vexed. Pray tell me."
He looked down at me very fixedly. Every trace of ungentle pa.s.sion had pa.s.sed away from his features, and there was a strange, undefined tenderness in his gaze, as he said in a low tone--
"If I have been vexed. Daisy, it is to find out a mistake--a great mistake of mine."
"What mistake, Cornelius?"
"Do you really want to know, Daisy?"
"Yes," I said, almost desperately, "I want to know."
There was a pause. He still stood by me, looking down in my face.
"Do not look so pale, and above all so frightened," he said, gently; "there is no need. How you tremble!" he added, taking my hand in both his, and speaking very sadly, "Oh, Daisy! Daisy!" And he turned his look away with a strange expression of disappointment and pain, of shame and mortification.
I hung down my head; I did not dare to look at him, to withdraw my hand, to move. I stood mutely expecting--what I knew not exactly; but I seemed to feel that it must be some shock, dreadful, because violent, that would perforce turn the current of my destiny, and compel it to flow through regions, where of itself, my will would never have led we. Vain fear; unfounded alarm. Cornelius turned to me, and said very calmly--
"The mistake into which I fell, was to think that we understood one another tacitly, Daisy. I do not love you now because I have reared you, but on your own merits, for the sake of that which you have become. And thus I thought that you too liked me, with a higher feeling than grat.i.tude. In short, as I like you myself--as a very dear friend."
He spoke simply and naturally. I breathed freely.
"Oh! how good, how generous you are!" I exclaimed, moved to the heart by so much delicacy of affection. "You want to raise me to an equality with you. G.o.d bless you, Cornelius."
I pressed his two hands in mine, with much emotion.
"Are you happy?" he asked, looking down at me.
"So very happy!" I replied, with a joyous smile.
"I am glad of it," he said, trying to smile too.
"Shall we resume the sitting?" I asked.
"Not to-day. 1 am in no mood to work; I think I shall go out for a walk."
I felt somewhat surprised that Cornelius did not ask me to join him; and so was Kate, when she learned from me--she had been in her room all this time--that he was gone out alone.
"Why did you not go with him?" she asked, frowning slightly.
"He did not ask me, Kate."
"You have not quarrelled?"
"Oh, no! we are very good friends."
The cloud pa.s.sed away from her brow. She kissed me and said "Of course you are."
Cornelius did not come in until late in the evening; he had walked miles, and was so tired that he could scarcely speak.
CHAPTER VII.
I awoke the next morning with a severe headache; I rose and came down as usual, thinking to hide it; scarcely, however, had I entered the front parlour, when Cornelius asked what ailed me. "Only a headache," I replied, carelessly; but he seemed filled with concern. He made me return to my room where I slept for a few hours, but without feeling any better; I then again went down to the parlour and lay on the sofa. Cornelius, who according to his sister had gone up to listen at my door every ten minutes--sat by me holding my hand.
"How feverish she is!" he said to Kate.
"There is twice as much fever in your blood as in that of Daisy,"
decisively replied Miss O"Reilly.
"Don"t be alarmed, Cornelius," I said quietly, "I do not feel as if I should realize the prediction of Dr. Mixton just yet."
"Don"t talk of that madman," exclaimed Cornelius, with a troubled face, "he was mad; only fit for Bedlam."