Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/187

Rh never married. Then suddenly Cornelius Morrison discovered that he was fond of Helen—that he loved Helen—as only a man can love the woman he wants to make his wife. And she was nineteen, and he was fifty-two!

He started for India a few weeks after his discovery. He didn't return for three years. When he came back he stopped off at Reddington as was his custom when returning to New York from the Far East. His old friend, Judge Dane, had died during his absence—he had been dead a year—but he wished to pay respect to his memory and also to find out if the little daughter, who had finished school now, was well and happy.

He was disturbed about the little daughter when he saw her. The death of her father must have cut deep. She had suffered. This tender creature was still suffering, Cornelius Morrison believed. It struck him, as he sat opposite her at dinner in the big ponderous dining-room where he had often sat opposite her father before, that she was like an abandoned kitten in this great empty place, with only paid caretakers to see that she was fed.

After dinner in the drawing-room he said to her, "Helen, I believe you are lonely here."

Calmly, with no tears (Helen had shed all her tears), with no raising of her voice—she might have been a woman of forty who spoke—she replied, "I am lonely, Mr. Morrison, and I am unhappy, too. I wish I could leave Reddington forever. There's absolutely nothing for me here now."

A wave of tenderness swept over Cornelius Morrison. A wild delirious hope sprang alive within his