What was the man to do or say? He had uttered a cry of pain and shame, and something like fury; but with the girl clinging round his neck, sobbing, flung upon his mercy, he was helpless. He looked over Dora’s bright head at Dr. Roland with, notwithstanding his impatience of interference, a sort of appeal for help. However keen the pang was both to his heart and his pride, he could not throw off his only child from her shelter in his arms. After a moment his hand instinctively came upon her hair, smoothing it down, soothing her, though half against his will. The other arm, with which he had half put her away, stole round her with a softer pressure. His child, his only child, all of his, belonging to no one but him, and weeping her heart out upon his neck, altogether thrown upon him to be excused and pardoned for having given him all the tendance and care and help which it was in her to give. He looked at Roland with a half appeal, yet with that unconscious pride of superiority in the man who has, towards the man who has not. “She has the right,” said the doctor, himself moved, but not perhaps with any sense of inferiority, for though he was nearly as old as Mr. Mannering, the beatitude of having a daughter had not yet become an ideal bliss to him--“she has the right; if anybody in the world has it, she has it, Mannering, and though she is a child, she has a heart and judgment as good as any of us. You’ll have to let her do in certain matters what seemeth good in her own eyes.” Mr. Mannering shook his head, and then bent it in reluctant acquiescence with a sigh. CHAPTER XXV. The house in Bloomsbury became vacant and silent.