Explore "The Secret of the Reef" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ruth had time to ponder her father's unfinished story, for a week elapsed before she could persuade him to continue it. Osborne was away for a few days, and when he came home his preoccupied manner suggested that he had business of importance on hand, and Ruth refrained from questioning him. The subject, however, had its fascination for the girl. She had been too young to retain more than a hazy recollection of her father in his struggling days, and she had fallen into the way of thinking of him as the polished and prosperous gentleman whom she had rejoined after a long separation. Now it was difficult to readjust her ideas and picture him as a needy adventurer, taking strange risks and engaging in occupations of doubtful respectability. She was, she hoped, not hypercritical, but she found it hard to reconcile the two sharply contrasted sides of his character.
At last, one evening, when they strolled across the lawn as dusk was falling, she determinedly led up to the subject, regardless of the smile with which he evaded her first questions.