ellion in her words.

"My child," he said, "I am at a grave disadvantage. It pleased God to
part us, and to deny us even the knowledge of each other's existence. I
am still a stranger."

"No, no, no!" she cried. She turned and ran to him, and it was plain
that an appeal couched in such terms was more than she could bear. "You
are my father," she sobbed, "my dear, dear father! All the dearer," she
went on, in words made half inarticulate by her tears, and all the more
expressive and affecting--"all the dearer because we never knew each
other through all those dreadful years! I love you, dear, and I am not
undutiful, and I will do whatever you ask me; but I want to be with you,
I want to be with you. I have had you for such a little time. I want
you--I want you always!"

"You must spare me to Italy," said her father, kissing her hands and
stroking them within his own.

"Italy! What would Italy be to me if you were not a part of it?" The
Southern blood broke out there plain to see, and in her flashing eyes
and vivid face and the free gesture with which she spoke she was Italian
all over. "Do you think a girl can love a country or a name as she loves
her father? Do you think she cares about your houses and intrigues,
your Piedmonts and Savoys, your Cavours and Metterniches? I would give
everything I have to Italy, but I would give it all to Austria just as
soon if you were on her side!"

The count stood as if stricken dumb. I do not believe that this human
natural aspect of the case had ever occurred to him as being within the
broadest limits of possibility. Italy had come to mean everything in
the world to him. The word meant love, revenge, ambition, the very daily
bread and water of his heart and soul. The fate of Italy overrode,
in his mind, every personal consideration--not only for himself, but,
unconsciously, for every living creature. It was natural that it should
be so. It would have been strange, perhaps, had it been otherwise. I
could see that his daughter's outburst sounded in his ears almost like a
blasphemy. He stood wonder-struck and silent.

"If you," he said at last, with a face as white as a ghost's, and
raising a shaking hand towards her--"if you, my daughter, the living
remembrance of my wife--if she herself were back here from her repose
in heaven--if all that ever were or could be dear to me stood on the
one side, and my country's freedom on the other, I would lose you all--I
would sacrifice you