When she returned to her room mamma was there in négligé and Joan Daisy heard voices in Dads' room and she knew that the hotel manager was present. He was excited and cross and shouting; Dads' voice was calm and courtly in its elaborate politeness and very dignified, as it always was when a manager shouted. The manager banged out and mamma scurried back to Dads' and her room, and in a few minutes Dads appeared, dressed with most scrupulous carefulness in immaculate white flannels. His cheeks and chin were clean-shaven and pink, and his black mustache was severely brushed and stiffened; and altogether he held himself in the over-impressive manner which told her that he was feeling especially ashamed of himself.
"Birthday greetings, Joan," he said, taking her face between his hands and kissing her forehead. He seldom used both her names, as others did, and he never called her Daisy, as her mother liked to do. "I regret that this morning a financial emergency has arisen which immediately necessitates my presence elsewhere. We are leaving this hotel in ten minutes."
"Yes," she said; and in this preliminary there was nothing unusual to make it memorable; but to-day, he asked: "Joan, do you love me?"
"Of course, I love you, Dads," she said.
"Why?" he asked and she replied, "Because you're my father"; whereat his hands held her cheeks closely but very gently and he said, "I am going to tell you something of that, Joan. I want you to know it now. I am not your father. I merely had the honor to marry your mother, who was left a widow after you were two years old. I want you to know this so you will never suffer from believing that blood of mine is in you. Joan, I greet and congratulate you upon your twelfth birthday."
She remembered that she threw herself into his arms
