Part 8 (1/2)

Jane was gazing at the girl. She knew well with what force the blow so long averted had fallen at last. In her own breast she seemed to feel the pain with which Lola had received her father's revelations.

”Lola,” she cried, leaning forward, ”don't feel so, my lamb! I'm sorry you had to know this. I tried hard to keep it from you. But it's all out now, and you must try to bear it. Your father don't realize--he hasn't meant to hurt you. He's fond of you, dearie. And he's going to take you to foreign lands, and you can see all the great pictures and statues, and have a chance to learn all the things you spoke of--designing and such. Don't look so, my child!”

Mr. Keene began to feel highly uncomfortable. Evidently, in his own phrase, he had ”put his foot into it;” he had said too much. He had disclosed fallacies in himself of which Lola, it seemed, knew nothing.

And now Lola, who had received him with such flattering warmth, was turning her face away and looking strange and stern and stricken.

Nor did Miss Combs seem fairly to have grasped the liberality of his intentions. She, too, had a curious air of not being exalted in any way by so much good fortune. She appeared to be engaged solely in trying to reconcile Lola to a situation which Mr. Keene considered dazzling.

Altogether it was very disturbing, especially to a man who did not understand what he had done to bring about so unpleasant a turn. He was about to ask some explanation, when Lola said slowly, ”And you, _tia_, you have done so much for me that you have nothing left? Is that so?”

”I don't need much, Lola. I'll be all right. Don't you worry.”

”You won't mind living here alone and poor?”

”She won't be poor, Lola,” interpolated Mr. Keene. ”Haven't I said so?

And you can come and see her, you know. Everything will come out all right.”

Lola turned a little toward him, and he was glad to see that her eyes were soft and gentle and that the stern look had disappeared. ”Yes,”

she said, ”it will come out all right for tia, because I shall be here to see that it does.”

She caught her breath and added, ”You couldn't think I should be willing to go away and leave her like this? Even if I hadn't heard how much more she has done for me than I dreamed? For I have been ignorant till now of many things; but I shouldn't have forgotten that she loved me and had reared me and cared for me when there was no one else. No, father, no! And now that you have let me find out what I owe her, do you think I sha'n't remember it always with every beat of my heart? Oh, yes--although I can never repay her for all she has suffered in keeping me from knowing things which would have hurt me too much when I was little and--and could not make allowances--as I can now. My home is here. My heart is here, father. You must let me stay!”

She had taken Jane's hand and was holding it closely--that happy hand which for very blessedness and amazement trembled more than her own.