"I went through the files of several papers, papa."
He looked at her suspiciously. The reports were probably very
incomplete. No doubt the reporters had garbled his evidence. They were
determined to give him no chance either in court or before the public
opinion. It was a conspiracy . . . "My counsel was a fool too," he
added. "Did you notice? A perfect fool."
She laid her hand on his arm soothingly. "Is it worth while talking
about that awful time? It is so far away now." She shuddered slightly
at the thought of all the horrible years which had passed over her young
head; never guessing that for him the time was but yesterday. He folded
his arms on his breast, leaned back in his corner and bowed his head. But
in a little while he made her jump by asking suddenly: "Who has got hold of the Lone Valley Railway? That's what they were
after mainly. Somebody has got it. Parfitts and Co. grabbed it--eh? Or
was it that fellow Warner . . . "
"I--I don't know," she said quite scared by the twitching of his lips.
"Don't know!" he exclaimed softly. Hadn't her cousin told her? Oh yes.
She had left them--of course. Why did she? It was his first question
about herself but she did not answer it. She did not want to talk of
these horrors. They were impossible to describe. She perceived though
that he had not expected an answer, because she heard him muttering to
himself that: "There was half a million's worth of work done and material
accumulated there."
"You mustn't think of these things, papa," she said firmly. And he asked
her with that invariable gentleness, in which she seemed now to detect
some rather ugly shades, what else had he to think about? Another year
or two, if they had only left him alone, he and everybody else would have
been all right, rolling in money; and she, his daughter, could have
married anybody--anybody. A lord.
All this was to him like yesterday, a long yesterday, a yesterday gone
over innumerable times, analysed, meditated upon for years. It had a
vividness and force for that old man of which his daughter who had not
been shut out of the world could have no idea. She was to him the only
living figure out of that past, and it was perhaps in perfect good faith
that he added, coldly, inexpressive and thin-lipped: "I lived only for
you, I may say. I suppose you understand that. There were only you and
me."