Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/249

 “You loved Waldo?” asked the boy’s father.

Nadara nodded her tumbled mass of raven hair. John Alden Smith-Jones looked down upon the bent head of the sobbing girl in silence for several minutes. Many things were racing through his patrician brain. He was by training, environment and heredity narrow and Puritanical. He saw the meager apparel of the girl—he saw her nut brown skin; but he did not see her nakedness, for something in his heart told him that sweet virtue clothed her more effectually than could silks and satins without virtue. Gently he placed an arm about her, drawing her to him.

“My daughter,” he said, and pressed his lips to her forehead.

It was a solemn and sorrow-ridden party that boarded the Priscilla an hour later. Mrs. Smith-Jones had seen them coming. Some intuitive sense may have warned her of the sorrow that lay in store for her upon their return. At any rate she did not meet them at the rail as in the past, instead she retired to her cabin to await her husband there. When he joined her he brought with him a half-naked young woman. Mrs. Smith-Jones looked upon the girl with ill concealed horror.

Waldo’s mother met the shock of her husband’s news with much greater fortitude than he had expected. As a matter of fact she had been prepared