Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/79

Rh believed that Corvet's disappearance had had something to do with her. Alan had wondered at the moment how that could be; and as he watched her across the table and now and then exchanged a comment with her, it puzzled him still more. He had opportunity to ask her when she waited with him in the library, after dinner was finished and her mother had gone up-stairs; but he did not see then how to go about it.

"I'm sorry," she said to him, "that we can't be home to-night; but perhaps you would rather be alone?"

He did not answer that.

"Have you a picture here, Miss Sherrill, of—my father?" he asked.

"Uncle Benny had had very few pictures taken; but there is one here."

She went into the study, and came back with a book open at a half-tone picture of Benjamin Corvet. Alan took it from her and carried it quickly closer to the light. The face that looked up to him from the heavily glazed page was regular of feature, handsome in a way, and forceful. There were imagination and vigor of thought in the broad, smooth forehead; the eyes were strangely moody and brooding; the mouth was gentle, rather kindly; it was a queerly impelling, haunting face. This was his father! But, as Alan held the picture, gazing down upon it, the only emotion which came to him was realization that he felt none. He had not expected to know his father from strangers on the street; but he had expected, when told that his father was before him, to feel through and through him the call of a common blood. Now, except for consternation at his own lack of feeling, he had no emotion of any sort; he could not attach to this man, because he bore the