Perhaps, too, he had been as much
sinned against as sinning. She stepped up to him and touched him on the
shoulder.
"Father," she said.
He turned round with all the quickness of a young man, for about him
there was a peculiar agility which his daughter had inherited. Like his
mind, his body was still nimble.
"My darling," he said, "I should have known your voice anywhere. It has
haunted my sleep for years. My darling, thank you for coming back to me,
and thank God for preserving you when so many were lost." Then he threw
his arms about her and kissed her.
She shrank from him a little, for by inadvertence he had pressed upon
the wound in her forehead.
"Forgive me," she said; "it is my head. It was injured, you know."
Then he saw the bandage about her brow, and was very penitent.
"They did not tell me that you had been hurt, Benita," he exclaimed in
his light, refined voice, one of the stamps of that gentility of blood
and breeding whereof all his rough years and errors had been unable to
deprive him. "They only told me that you were saved. It is part of my
ill-fortune that at our first moment of greeting I should give you pain,
who have caused you so much already."
Benita felt that the words were an apology for the past, and her heart
was touched.
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