no response to her words, but in the one look which his hollow eyes
cast on her, he seemed to read the falsehood of her assertions.

"I was going to add," he said, "that though you forgot you were my
son, and refused to act as my son, when you withheld the paltry sum
for which I begged, yet I could not refrain from coming once more to
look on my child's face--to look on the face of my departed wife in
yours--for I know that a very brief period must finish my life now.
I should not have come here, I feel--I know it is the weakness of my
nature--I should have died amongst strangers, for the strangers
of other countries, the people of a different hue and a different
language, I have found kind and pitiful, compared with those of my
own house."

"Oh, don't say so--don't say so--you are our own beloved father; ah,
my heart clings to every feature of your poor, dear old face: there
are the eyes and all that I used to talk to Henry so much about. Don't
talk of strangers--I shall nurse you and attend to you night and day."

She made a movement, as if she would throw her arms around his neck
again, but the old man drew back.

"Woman! your hypocritical words show me that your pitiless heart is
still unchanged--that it has grown even worse. You forced me out to
the world in my old age, when I should have had no thoughts except
of God and the world to come; you forced me to think of money-making,
when my hair was gray and my blood cold with years. Yes, I had to
draw my thoughts from the future existence, and to waste them on the
miserable toils of traffic, in order to make money: for it was better
to do this than to drag out my life a pensioner on your bounty,