to hear any more of that! You can't hold him responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I guess! He probably doesn't know a thing about it. You don't suppose he's troubling his head over———"
But she burst out at him passionately. "Suppose you trouble your head about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams? You'd better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of a heart!"
"Oh, my, my!" he groaned. "What's my heart got to do with it?"
"Nothing! You haven't got one or you'd give her what she needed. Am I asking anything you can't do? You know better; you know I'm not!"
At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. "Now, tell me," he said, slowly. "Just what are you asking?"
"You know!" she sobbed.
"You mean you've broken your word never to speak of that to me again?"
