or against myself, but what I ask is for justice. I
know if that daughter, your granddaughter, came here she would love you
with all her heart."

She clasped her hands together and looked up at him as though he could
see her; her voice shook with emotion.

"Wouldn't you like to be loved by your granddaughter?" she asked
pleadingly.

The blind man rose impatiently.

"I tell you she can never be anything to me," he cried. "I hate her as I
hate her mother. The woman took my son from me and she keeps him from
me. If she had not bewitched him he would have been back long before
this. She has been everything to him while I, his father, have been
nothing."

He strode back and forth, carried away with his anger. She had never
seen him like this. Suddenly he stopped before her.

"Go to your room," he said almost harshly, "and never speak of those
creatures to me again; besides, what right have you to mix up in this?
Who told you to speak to me in such a manner?"

For a moment she was dumbfounded, then she said:

"Oh, no one, sir, I assure you. I just put myself into your little
granddaughter's place, that is all."

He softened somewhat, but he continued still in a severe voice: "In the
future do not speak on this subject; you see it is painful for me and
you must not annoy me."

"I beg your pardon," she said, her voice full of tears; "certainly I
ought not to have spoken so."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BLIND MAN'S GRIEF

Monsieur Vulfran advertised in the principal newspapers of Calcutta,
Dacca, Bombay and London for his son. He offered a reward of forty
pounds to anyone who could furnish any information, however slight it
might be, about Edmond Paindavoine. The information must, however, be
authentic. Not wishing to give his own address, which might have brought
to him all sorts of correspondence more or less dishonest, he put the
matter into the hands of his banker at Amiens.

Numerous letters were received, but very few were serious; the greater
number came from detectives who guaranteed to find the person they were
searching for if the expenses for the first steps necessary could be
sent them. Other letters promised everything without any foundation
whatever upon which they based their promises. Others related events
that had occurred five, ten, twelve years previous; no one kept to the
time stated in the advertisement, that was the last three years.

Perrine read or translated all these letters for the