heiress. She had confessed her feelings to her father, her best friend,
and persuaded him to have patience a little longer, and wait for the
change which he himself expected in his nephew.

This had not been difficult, for Archias loved Hermon, in spite of the
many anxieties he had caused him, as if he were his own son and, knowing
his daughter, he was aware that she could be happy with the man who
possessed her heart though he was deprived of sight.

The fame which Hermon had won by great genius and ability had gratified
him more than he expressed, and he could not contradict Daphne when she
asserted that, in spite of the aimless life of pleasure to which be
devoted himself, he had remained the kind-hearted, noble man he had
always been.

In fact, he used, unasked and secretly, a considerable portion of his
large revenues to relieve the distress of the poor and suffering.
Archias learned this as the steward of his nephew's property, and when to
do good he made new demands upon him, he gladly fulfilled them; only he
constantly admonished the blind man to think of his own severe sufferings
and his cure. Daphne did the same, and he willingly obeyed her advice;
for, loudly and recklessly as he pursued pleasure in social circles, he
showed himself tenderly devoted to her when he found her alone in her
father's house. Then, as in better days, he opened his heart to her
naturally and modestly and, though he refrained from vows of love, he
showed her that he did not cease to seek with her, and her alone, what
his noisy pleasures denied. Then he also found the old tone of
affection, and of late he came more frequently, and what he confided to
no one else implied to her, at least by hints.