In silence she stood so while you might count to twenty; then with a sudden vehemence revealing the passion of anger and grief that swayed her: "Why," she cried, "why in God's name do you tell me this ?" "Why ?" His utterance was thick, and his eyes, that were grown dull as a snake's, stared straight before him, daring not to meet his daughter's glance.

"I tell it you," he said, "because I am a dying man." And he hoped that the consideration of that momentous fact might melt her, and might by pity win her back to him--that she was lost to him he realized.
"I tell you because I am a dying man," he repeated.

"I tell it you because in such an hour I fain would make confession and repent, that God may have mercy upon my soul.

I tell it you, too, because the tragedy begun eighteen years ago is not yet played out, and it may yet be mine to avert the end we had prepared--Joseph and I.Thus perhaps a merciful God will place it in my power to make some reparation.

Listen, child.
It was against us, as you will have guessed, that Galliard enlisted Kenneth's services, and here on the night of Joseph's return he called upon the boy to fulfil him what he had sworn.