'
'You ought to, it seems to me,' said Clem, giggling. 'Look at him.'
Jane tried to regard the man for a moment. Her cheeks flushed with
confusion. Again she looked at him, and the colour rapidly faded. In
her eyes was a strange light of painfully struggling recollection.
She turned to Clem, and read her countenance with distress.
'Well, I'm quite sure I should never have known _you_, Janey,' said
Snowdon, advancing. 'Don't you remember your father?'
Yes; as soon as consciousness could reconcile what seemed
impossibilities Jane had remembered him. She was not seven years old
when he forsook her, and a life of anything but orderly progress had
told upon his features. Nevertheless Jane recognised the face she
had never had cause to love, recognised yet more certainly the voice
which carried her back to childhood. But what did it all mean? The
shock was making her heart throb as it was wont to do before her
fits of illness. She looked about her with dazed eyes.
'Sit down, sit down,' said her father, not without a note of genuine
feeling. 'It's been a bit too much for you--like something else
was for me just now. Put some water in that glass, Clem; a drop of
this will do her good.
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