this was too sacred a scene for him to intrude upon.
"Would you mind excusing me," he said; "there are some calculations I've
got to rush out"--and he returned to the bench on which they had been
sitting and pretended to busy himself over a pocket notebook.

While Larry had been speaking and moving away, Maggie had swiftly
been appraising her father. His gray eyes were direct as against the
furtiveness of Jimmie's; his mouth had a firm kindliness as against the
wrinkled cunning of Jimmie's; his bearing was erect, self-possessed,
as against Jimmie's bent, shuffling carriage. Maggie felt no swift-born
daughter love for this stranger who was her father. The turmoil of her
discovery filled her too completely to admit a full-grown affection; but
she thrilled with the sense of the vast difference between her supposed
father and this her real father.

In the meantime her father had spoken. Joe would have been more reserved
with men or with older women; but with this girl, so much the sort of
girl he had long dreamed about, his reserve vanished without resistance,
and in its place was a desire to talk to this beautiful creature who
came out of the world which the big white house represented.

"I have a daughter, yes," he said. "But Larry--Mr. Brainard perhaps I
should say--has likely told you all there is to tell."

"I'd like to hear it from you, please--if you don't mind."

"There's really not much to tell," he said. "You know what I was and
what happened. When I went to prison my daughter was too young to
remember me--less than two years old. I didn't want her ever to be drawn
into the sort of life that had been mine, or be the sort of woman that a
girl becomes who gets into that life. And I didn't want her ever to have
the stigma, and the handicap, of her knowing and the world knowing that
her father was a convict. You can't understand it fully, Miss Cameron,
but perhaps you can understand a little how disgraced you would feel,
what a handicap it would be, if your father were a convict. I had a good
friend I could trust. So I turned my daughter over to him, to be
brought up with no knowledge of my existence, and with every reasonable
advantage that a nice girl should have. I guess that's all, Miss
Cameron."

"This friend--what was his name?"

"Carlisle--Jimmie Carlisle. But his name could never have meant anything
to you. Besides, he's dead now."

Maggie forced herself on. "Your plan--it turned out all right? And
yo