acher the Colonel never dreamed, and was
speechless with surprise and anger when asked by the young Italian for
her hand. To show him the door was the work of a moment, and then Dora
was sent for. She came at once, with a look in her eyes which made the
Colonel hesitate a little before he told her what he had done, and what
he expected her to do.

"If you disobey me in the slightest, you are no longer a daughter of my
house," he said, in the cold, hard tone which Dora knew so well, and had
feared so much.

But the fear was over now. Something had transformed the timid girl into
a woman, with a courage equal to the Colonel's. For a time she stood
perfectly still, with her eyes fixed upon the angry man, listening to
him until he spoke of her as the daughter of the house; then, with a
gesture of her hands, which bade him stop, she exclaimed, "I did not
know I was daughter of anything. For fifteen years I have lived here,
and though you have been kind to me in your way, you have surrounded
yourself with an air of reserve so cold and impregnable that I have
never dared ask you who I am, since I was a child, and asked you about
my mother. You told me then never to mention that subject again, and I
never have. But do you think I have forgotten that I had a mother? I
have not. I do forget some things in a strange way. They come in a
moment and go, and I cannot bring them back, but the face I think was
mother's is not one of them. Of my father I remember nothing. I have
been told that when you brought me here you said he was a scoundrel! Are
you he? Are you my father?"

The Colonel was white as a sheet, and his lips twitched nervously, as if
it were hard for them to frame the word No, which came at last
decidedly. Over Dora's face a look of disappointment passed, and her
hands grasped the back of a chair in front of her, as if she needed
support.

"If you are not my father, who and what was my mother?" was her next
question, and the Colonel replied, "She was an honest woman. Be
satisfied with that."

"I never for a moment thought her dishonest," the girl exclaimed,
vehemently. "I remember her as some one seen in a dream--a frail little
body, with a sweet face which seldom smiled. There were other faces
round us--dusky ones--negroes, weren't they?"

Her eyes compelled the Colonel to bow assent, and she continued, "I
thought so, and our home was South; not a grand home like this, but a
cabin, I think. Wasn't it a cabin?"