Her father smiled again, bitterly.
"Yes, I have," said he, with slow emphasis, "and I regret to say, my
dear child, that my diagnosis of his character is precisely what I first
thought. Any interest you may feel in that quarter is being applied to a
very unworthy object. The man is one of my discharged employees, a
thorough rascal and hard ticket in every way--one of the lowest-bred and
most villainous persons yet unhung, I grieve to state. The fact that he
carried you in his arms, and that I owe your preservation to him, is one
of the bitterest facts in my life. Had it been any other man, no matter
of what humble birth--"
"Father!" she cried, bending forward and gazing at him with strange
eyes. "Father! By what right and on what authority do you make these
accusations? That man, I know, was all that innate gentleness and
upright manhood could make any man. His nobility was not of wealth or
title, but of--"
"Nonsense!" Flint interrupted. "Nobility, eh? Read _that_, will you?"
Leering, despite himself, he handed the paper across the table to his
daughter.
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