“Why do you sigh, father?” asked Coral, “and why do you look so pale?”
“You look so like your mother, child,” said her father. “What makes you look so like her to-day?”
“Father,” said Coral, “if some one had taken my mother away from you over the sea into a strange country where she could never see you more, how would she have felt?”
“She would have died,” said the Count, as if the words were uttered in spite of himself.
“She could not have loved you better than I love Keefe,” said Coral; “if I go where I cannot see him I shall die.”
“Well, you shall see him, Coralie; I will write to him to-night, and ask him to come here.”
“Oh, father, will you? This very night? Good, kind father! Then we shall be happy, all of us; then I shall love my father truly, and with all the warmth of my heart, not with the coldness of duty; then I will try to do everything to please him; then I shall be able to learn drawing and grammar, and every tiresome thing, for Keefe will help me; and then, if my father likes, I will go to France, for Keefe will come too.”
“And will my daughter do another thing to please her father, who is giving up the strongest and most cherished feelings of his life to make her happy? Will she learn to worship God in the way he thinks right?”
“If Keefe says I ought to do it, I will,” aid Coral; but the next instant she added, truthfully, “he never will though, I know that.”
“We shall see. And will you grow well and strong if I write this letter, Coralie, and never frighten me more with pale looks, and dreamy eyes?”
“Oh, yes, I shall get well and strong, I shall not be pale, or sad, or stupid any more. I shall be glad and merry all day long when Keefe comes. You will love your little Coral a thousand times better than ever then; and she will love her dear father who has made her happy, and try to make him happy too. And Keefe, oh! when you see Keefe you will love him far more than me.”
“If I do, he must be a powerful wizard indeed,” said the Count.
“But when will you write, father? Had you not better do it at once, this minute? It will be so long till the letter will reach him, and before he can come to us. Let me get your portfolio—there now, write, dear father, write at once.”
“Well, I will write, but not while you stand beside me, Coral; go and take a walk, and against you come back I shall have written my letter.”
“You promise, father?”
“I promise.”
“Very well, then, I will go. I begin to be obedient and good from this minute.”
And kissing her father, she walked out of the room, with more brightness and hope in her face, and more vigour and elasticity in her step than either had shown since she had first heard from Keefe that she was to leave Long Arrow. Her father remained sitting at his open portfolio, but he seemed in no haste to begin his letter.
His head rested in his hand, and the expression of his face grew every moment more dissatisfied, gloomy, and anxious. He had formed high expectations of the destiny Coral might command hereafter, convinced that after a year or two spent under the care of the best masters and governesses in France should have fitted her to enter society, her great beauty and rich inheritance could not fail to procure her many suitors of rank and fortune, among whom he might choose her a husband who would at the same time gratify his ambition and make his daughter happy, and in whose care he might securely leave her when his death, which he had reason to think could not be very far off, should happen. As for her love for Keefe, he had looked on it at first as a childish attachment, which absence, and the new sphere of life into which she had entered, would soon dissipate; but as time passed, and he saw her still pale, listless, joyless, evidently taking no interest or pleasure in anything that surrounded her, and only roused to animation when some aspect of nature, some bird, or flower, or leaf touched the chords of association, and brought back to her for a little space the shadow of her forest home, he began to fear that the love which could render everything else in the world so utterly indifferent to her, must be far deeper rooted in her heart than he had at first supposed, and something very different from the transient fancy he had at first believed it; till at last, as he saw her slight figure grow more fragile, her skin show a more unhealthy clearness, and a wild, fitful brightness gleam in her eyes, terror, lest the regrets which preyed on her mind should irretrievably ruin her health, took possession of him, and with it came the conviction that every sacrifice of pride and ambition would be as dust in the balance, compared with the loss of her whose presence had revived all the human sympathies and affections which had so long withered in his heart for want of nourishment, and given them a second life. Under the influence of these feelings he wrote to Keefe, thinking that from his answer he might form some slight judgment of the young man’s character and capacity for improvement, if he found it necessary to admit him to Coral‘s society, as the only means of saving her life. The answer, when it came, surprised him not a little. It was brief, manly, and independent in tone, but neither rude nor vulgar; and though Keefe declined the Count’s offer of assistance decidedly, he did so not only politely, but with one or two simple expressions of gratitude which were evidently sincere. To attribute this refusal to any want of love for Coral never entered the Count’s head; on the contrary, he imputed it to an honourable and high-spirited determination in Keefe to owe nothing to one who he might suppose would never have made any advances towards him, had he thought it possible for him to aspire to his daughter’s hand. Little did the Count suspect that though Keefe felt a tender affection for his pretty playmate, the childish dependant on his manly strength, the neglected orphan whose life he had saved, whose passionate heart had given him all its love, it was a calm and brotherly affection, mingled with a pity, which however generous, would have made her father’s proud blood boil over had he known of its existence.