e like death
in there."

"It's more like death out here. But if it's the cold you mean, you
needn't be troubled. We've had a fire to-day, airing out the house. Will
you go?"

"But what do you--what are you going to say to me?"

"I don't know, yet. If I said anything now, I should tell you what Mr.
Westover did: go back to that girl, if she'll let you. You're fit for
each other, as he said. Did you tell her that you were engaged to some
one else?"

"I did, last night."

"But before that she didn't know how false you were. Well, you're not
fit for her, then; you're not good enough."

She opened the door and went in, closing it after her. Jeff turned and
walked slowly away; then he came quickly back, as if he were going to
follow her within. But through the window he saw her as she stood by the
table with a lamp in her hand. She had turned up the light, which shone
full in her face and revealed its severe beauty broken and writhen with
the effort to repress her weeping. He might not have minded the severity
or the beauty, but the pathos was more than he could stand. "Oh, Lord!"
he said, with a shrug, and he turned again and walked slowly up the
hill.

When Whitwell faced his daughter in the little sitting-room, whose low
ceiling his hat almost touched as he stood before her, the storm had
passed with her, and her tear-drenched visage wore its wonted look of
still patience.

"Did Jeff tell you why I sent for you, father?"

"No. But I knew it was trouble," said Whitwell, with a dignity which-his
sympathy for her gave a countenance better adapted to the expression of
the lighter emotions.

"I guess you were right about him," she resumed: She went on to tell
in brief the story that Jeff had told her. Her father did not interrupt
her, but at the end he said, inadequately: "He's a comical devil. I knew
about his gittin' that feller drunk. Mr. Westover told me when he was up
here."

"Mr. Westover did!" said Cynthia, in a note of indignation.

"He didn't offer to," Whitwell explained. "I got it out of him in spite
of him, I guess." He had sat down with his hat on, as his absent-minded
habit was, and he now braced his knees against the edge of the table.
Cynthia sat across it from him with her head drooped over it, drawing
vague figures on the board with her finger. "What are you goin' to do?"

"I don't know," she answered.

"I guess you don't quite realize it yet," her father suggested,
tenderly. "Well, I don't