"You did not think I was that bad, did you?" she said. "But I was! I was!" "Louisianny," he said, huskily, "come yere. Thar aint no need fer ye to blame yerself thataway. Yer kinder wrought up." "Don't be kind to me!" she said. "Don't! I want to tell you all--every word! I was so bad and proud and angry that I meant to carry it out to the end, and tried to--only I was not quite bad enough for one thing, father--I was not bad enough to be ashamed of _you_, or to bear to sit by and see them cast a slight upon you. They didn't mean it for a slight--it was only their clever way of looking at things--but _I_ loved you. You were all I had left, and I knew you were better than they were a thousand times! Did they think I would give your warm, good heart--your kind, faithful heart--for all they had learned, or for all they could ever learn? It killed me to see and hear them! And it seemed as if I was on fire. And I told them the truth--that you were _my_ father and that I loved you and was proud of you--that I might be ashamed of myself and all the rest, but not of you--never of you--for I wasn't worthy to kiss your feet!" For one moment her father watched her, his lips parted and trembling. It seemed as if he meant to try to speak, but could not. Then his eyes fell with an humble, bewildered, questioning glance upon his feet, encased in their large, substantial brogans--the feet she had said she was not worthy to kiss. What he saw in them to touch him so it would be hard to tell--for he broke down utterly, put out his hand, groping to feel for his chair, fell into it with head bowed on his arm, and burst into sobbing too. She left her self-imposed exile in an instant, ran to him, and knelt down to lean against him. "Oh!" she cried, "have I broken your heart? Have I broken your heart? Will God ever forgive me? I don't ask you to forgive me, father, for I don't deserve it." At first he could not speak, but he put his arm round her and drew her head up to his breast--and, with all the love and tenderness he had lavished upon her all her life, she had never known such love and tenderness as he expressed in this one movement. "Louisianny," he said, brokenly, when he had found his voice, "it's you as should be a-forgivin' me." "I!" she exclaimed. He held her in his trembling arm so close that she felt his heart quivering. "To think," he almost whispered, "as I should not hev ben doin' ye jestice! To think as I didn't know ye well enough to do ye jestice! To think yer own father, thet's knowed ye all yer life, could hev give in to its bein' likely as ye wasn't--what he'd allers thought, an' what yer mother 'd thought, an' what ye was, honey." "I don't----" she began falteringly.