"Give your dear daughter a kiss!" She had not meant to say that at all.
Tall and gaunt and gray and old; lines etched deep ground his bitter mouth; pale with the tragic prison pallor; looking out at the world with the somber eyes of one who has suffered most cruelly,--Aleck Douglas put out his thin, shaking arms and held her close.

He did not say anything at all; and the kiss she asked for he laid softly upon her hair.
Lite stood in the doorway and looked at the two of them for a moment.
"I'm going down to see about--things.

I'll be back in a little while.
And, Jean, will you be ready ?" Jean looked up at him understandingly, and with a certain shyness in her eyes.

"If it's all right with dad," she told him, "I'll be ready." "Lite's a man!" Aleck stated unsmilingly, with a trace of that apathy which had hurt Jean so in the warden's office.

"I'm glad you'll have him to take care of you, Jean." So Lite closed the door softly and went away and left those two alone.
In a very few words I can tell you the rest.