kneeling beside my bed, and my brain
whirled with the unreality of it all. The "man of mystery," the
"Quester" of Broadway, the elderly soldier of fortune, about whose
reputed wealth and constant searching of faces wherever he was the
idle gossip of the city's Bohemia had whirled--to think that this man
was the father I had never known, the father, alas! whom I had hoped
never to know.

Everything was clear to me now--the reason for his staring at me when
he first caught sight of me in the Sydenham Hotel, his trailing of my
movements until he had found out my name and home, the introduction
he obtained to Dicky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing
my mother's name, his embarrassing attentions to me ever since--the
explanation for all of which had puzzled me had come in the choking
words of the man whose head was bowed against my bed, and whose whole
frame was shaking with suppressed sobs.

I felt myself trembling in the grip of a mighty surge of longing to
gather that bowed gray head into my arms and lavish the love he longed
for upon my father. My heart sang a little hymn of joy. I, who had
been kinless, with no one of my own blood, had found a father!

And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father's head,
the revulsion came.

True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my
mother's life one long tragedy. All my life I had schooled myself to
hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years
old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the
woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. My love for my
mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left
me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man
who had caused her to suffer so terribly.

My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his
eyes which made me shudder. It was the look of a prisoner in the dock,
waiting to receive a sentence.

"Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret," he
said brokenly. "I had not meant to tell you so soon. But I have to go
away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I
shall return. I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have
loved and longed for you.

"Never so great a sinner as I, my child," the weary old voice went
on, "but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of
loneliness."

His voice tore at my he