in your voice, and made the best of it:
and when I had nobody besides you, and was getting broken, as a man
must who has had to fight his way with his brains--you chose that time
to leave me. Who else was it you owed everything to, if not to me? and
where was your feeling in return? For what my daughter cared, I might
have died in a ditch."

Lapidoth stopped short here, not from lack of invention, but because he
had reached a pathetic climax, and gave a sudden sob, like a woman's,
taking out hastily an old yellow silk handkerchief. He really felt that
his daughter had treated him ill--a sort of sensibility which is
naturally strong in unscrupulous persons, who put down what is owing to
them, without any _per contra_. Mirah, in spite of that sob, had energy
enough not to let him suppose that he deceived her. She answered more
firmly, though it was the first time she had ever used accusing words
to him.

"You know why I left you, father; and I had reason to distrust you,
because I felt sure that you had deceived my mother. If I could have
trusted you, I would have stayed with you and worked for you."

"I never meant to deceive your mother, Mirah," said Lapidoth, putting
back his handkerchief, but beginning with a voice that seemed to
struggle against further sobbing. "I meant to take you back to her, but
chances hindered me just at the time, and then there came information
of her death. It was better for you that I should stay where I was, and
your brother could take care of himself. Nobody had any claim on me but
you. I had word of your mother's death from a particular friend, who
had undertaken to manage things for me, and I sent him over money to
pay expenses. There's one chance to be sure--" Lapidoth had quickly
conceived that he must guard against something unlikely, yet
possible--"he may have written me lies for the sake of getting the
money out of me."

Mirah made no answer; she could not bear to utter the only true one--"I
don't believe one word of what you say"--and she simply showed a wish
that they should walk on, feeling that their standing still might draw
down unpleasant notice. Even as they walked along, their companionship
might well have made a passer-by turn back to look at them. The figure
of Mirah, with her beauty set off by the quiet, careful dress of an
English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking,
eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness
o