Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/178

166 helped her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway, every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.

Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for, cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that—it was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his death-blow.

The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation. Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He would absorb her, envelop her, in-