The Argosy — page 174: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Shower of Daffodils. 159 relief. ‘You will come in, when we get there, and let my father thank you?” she added, warmly. ‘‘ He wanted me so very much ; he is ill, as I mentioned to you. JI am sure he will like to thank you. But for you I should never have got here. I should most likely have died.” ‘You do not know your father,” he coldly said. “No,” said Evelyn, wondering; for she had not told him that. She was more at ease now that they were walking in the muddy lane, and began to consider her guide. ‘Do you know my father ?” she at length asked. ‘T do,” was the reply. ‘‘ Child, if you knew that he had deeply wronged you, how should you feel towards him ?” ‘ He would still be my father,” said Evelyn, softly. ‘“¢ And if you knew that he had sorrowed day and night, night and day for his sin—could you forgive him? Child, could you forgive him ?” It did not seem to Evelyn strange that this man, who had already done so much for her, should be speaking to her in this way of her father. It was all part of the same bewildering dream of which this stranger’s kindness had been the light. ‘“‘T forgive my father ?” she at length said, simply. ‘I have nothing to do with forgiving. I have nothing to give my father but love.” Even as she spoke they came to a cottage, and she knew intuitively that it was her destination. Evelyn stepped upon the threshold, and turned to say something to her guide. But she did not see him. ‘To her intense astonishment she was alone. She gazed around, but he was not to be seen; he seemed to have vanished in the same mysterious manner that he had come. It was her father’s door to which he had conducted her, she felt certain of that, and she knocked softly at it. She saw a glimmer of light through a window, and waited; but no one came to answer her. At length she tried the handle of the door. It was not fas- tened, and she went in gently—not to a passage or hall, but to a room: half sitting-room, half bedroom. Upon a chest of drawers a lamp burned low. In the grate were the ashes of a dead fire. Upon the bed someone was lying, covered by a blue quilt; no doubt her father. No one else was in the room. Evelyn closed the door, and moved towards the bed. Why were the clothes covering him so completely ? She lifted the quilt from the face, and then she uttered a startled cry : it was the face of a corpse. And, more than this—z?t was the face of her strange guide. Recovering, as she best could, the shock, she threw herself upon the bed and stroked the dead face with her cold, trembling hands, and cried piteously to the ears that were now for ever deaf. ‘Father, father, I have come! Come to love you, to care for you—too late. Why did you not send for me earlier? Oh, my father!” She burst into-a fit of uncontrollable weeping. Her cry brought forth an old nurse from the kitchen, who took in the situation at once. COnniclbooks am