a fine simple woman like
your mother--something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you ever
to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to be
handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He still
had intact your mother's fortune, a small one, but an honest one. So
he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with the
instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicest
families are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan."

"That friend of his, Larry?" she whispered tensely.

"Jimmie Carlisle."

"O--oh!"

"I don't know what Jimmie Carlisle's motives were for what he has done.
Perhaps to get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father,
which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for your
father was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly
contrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie's motive,
his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical
revenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago,
when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie
regularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about how
splendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people. And
your father--I knew him in prison--now believes you have grown up into
exactly the kind of young woman he planned."

"Larry!" she choked in a numbed voice. "Larry!"

"Your father is now as happy as it is possible for him to be, for he has
lived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, the
only big thing left for him to do, has come to pass: that somewhere out
in the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome young
woman, with a clean, wholesome life before her. And though she is the
one thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again for
fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would
destroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous
meaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can you
conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and
the reality?"

She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance,
self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an
appalled and frightened young girl.

After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored: "Is
my real father--still in prison?"