‘I can scarcely tell you what I felt in that moment,’ she said. ‘Joy was uppermost in my mind. How could I feel otherwise than happy in the return of the father I had mourned as dead? Then came pity for him. His worn haggard face—his threadbare clothes—spoke of struggle and hardship. He told me very briefly the story of a life that had been one long failure, and how he found himself at this hour newly returned from America, and cast penniless and shelterless upon the stones of the London streets. “If you can’t give me a hole to lie in somewhere in that big house, I must go out and try to get lodged in the workhouse, or steal a loaf and get rather better fare in a gaol.” That was what he said, Lucius. He told me what difficulties he had encountered in his search after me. “My heart yearned for you, Lucille,” he said; “it was the thought of you and of the poor old father that brought me back from America.”’ ‘And no instinct warned you that this man was lying?’ ‘O no, no; I had no such thought as that,’ answered Lucille quickly. ‘Yet I confess,’ she went on more deliberately, ‘there was a vague feeling of disappointment in my mind. This long-lost father, so unexpectedly restored to me, did not seem quite all that I had dreamed him; there was something wanting to make my joy perfect—there was a doubt or a fear in my mind which took no definite shape. I only felt that my father’s return did not make me so happy as it ought to have done.’ ‘Did he see this, do you think?’ ‘I don’t know. But when I hesitated about admitting him to the house—unknown to my grandfather—he reproached me for my want of natural affection. “The world is alike all over,” he said; “and even a daughter has no welcome for a pauper; though he comes three thousand miles to look at the girl who used to sit on his knee and put her soft little arms round his neck, and vow she loved him better than any one else in the world.” I told him how cruel this accusation was, and how I had remembered him and loved him all through these long years, and how the dearest wish of my heart had been for such a meeting as this. But I said that I did not like to keep his return a secret from his father, and I begged him to let me take him straight to my grandfather, and to trust to a father’s natural affection for forgiveness of all that had severed them in the past. My father greeted this suggestion with scornful laughter. “Natural affection!” he exclaimed. “Did he show much natural affection when he turned me out of doors? Did he show natural affection to my mother when his cruelty drove her out of his house? Has he ever spoken of me with natural affection during the last ten years? Answer me that, Lucille!” What answer could I give him, Lucius? You know how my grandfather has always spoken of his only son.’ ‘Yes, dear; and I know what your grandfather’s affection concealed from you—the shameful cause of that severance between father and son.’