d see
across the table, with its chemical apparatus, the light of the shaded
lamp thrown upon the calm, placid, handsome face, as the doctor lay back
on the couch, taking his drug-bought rest according to his nightly
custom.

Rich sighed and walked right in, the door closing behind her as she
crossed the room, and stood gazing down, her head bent, and handy
clasped, while for the moment she forgot her nerve-pains, and the tears
started to her eyes.

"Poor father!" she sighed; "always so kind and gentle in spite of all.
How do I know what he may suffer beneath the mask he wears?"

She thought of the prosperity they had once enjoyed, the many patients
who came, and how, in this very room, as a child, he used to play with
her long curling hair, while she, with childlike delight, emptied the
little wooden bowl, and counted how many guineas papa had received that
morning.

She recalled, too, the carriage in which she had sat waiting, while he,
the handsome young doctor, had made his calls upon rich patients; and
then, like a cloud, came creeping up the memories of the gradual decline
of his practice, as he had devoted himself more and more to the dream of
his life--this discovery of a vital fluid which should repair the waste
of all disease, and with the indulgence in his chimera came the poverty
and despair.

"Poor father!" she sighed again, bending down and kissing the broad
white forehead; "there has never been anything between us but love."

She rose slowly, went to a corner where a faded old dressing-gown hung
upon a chair, and this she softly laid over the sleeping man, gazed at
the fire, which was burning brightly, and then stole away with the
agonising pang, forgotten for the moment, sweeping back, and seeming to
drive her mad.

"I see yer a-kissing of him, Miss," said Bob, grinning, as she closed
the door.

Rich turned upon him angrily; but the boy was looking dreamily towards
the doctor, and rubbing his shock head of hair.

"Don't he look niste when he's asleep like that? There ain't such a
good-looking gent nowhere's about here as our master."

There was so much genuine admiration in the boy's tones that the angry
look gave place to one of half amusement, half pity.

"I've often wondered whether if ever I'd had a father, he'd ha' been
like the doctor, Miss. Ain't yer proud on him?"

"Yes, Bob, yes," she cried, laying her hand upon the boy's shoulder,
while a strange sensation of depression, as of