"
"Your heart is your best guide, daughter, and it would be an ill task
for me to stand between sire and child. Enter then, for I am sure that
the Saints and your own innocence will protect you from all harm. At the
worst you can come or send to me for help."
So they parted, and the bridge having been lowered, Eve walked boldly
to her father's sleeping chamber, where she was told he lay. As she
approached the door she met several of the household leaving it with
scared faces, who scarcely stayed to salute her. Among these were two
servants of her dead brother John, men whom she had never liked, and a
woman, the wife of one of them, whom she liked least of all.
Pushing open the door, which was shut behind her, she advanced toward
Sir John, who was not, as she had thought, in bed, but clad in a furred
robe and standing by the hearth, on which burnt a fire. He watched her
come, but said no word, and the look of him frightened her somewhat.
"Father," she said, "I heard that you were sick and alone----"
"Ay," he broke in, "sick, very sick here," and he laid his hand upon his
heart, "where grief strikes a man. Alone, too, since you and your fellow
have done my only son to death, murdered my guests, and caused them to
depart from so bloody a house."
Now Eve, who had come expecting to find her father at the point of death
and was prepared to plead with him, at these violent words took fire as
was her nature.
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