seat,
she took hers, and he began his meal. They did not, as yet, look at one
another. By little and little he began; laying down his knife and fork
with a noise, taking things up sharply, biting at his bread as if he
were offended with it, and in other similar ways showing that he was out
of sorts. At length he pushed his plate from him, and spoke aloud; with
the strangest inconsistency.

'What does it matter whether I eat or starve? What does it matter
whether such a blighted life as mine comes to an end, now, next week, or
next year? What am I worth to anyone? A poor prisoner, fed on alms and
broken victuals; a squalid, disgraced wretch!'

'Father, father!' As he rose she went on her knees to him, and held up
her hands to him.

'Amy,' he went on in a suppressed voice, trembling violently, and
looking at her as wildly as if he had gone mad. 'I tell you, if you
could see me as your mother saw me, you wouldn't believe it to be the
creature you have only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was
young, I was accomplished, I was good-looking, I was independent--by God
I was, child!--and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!'

'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished
in the air, but he resisted, and put her hand away.

'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so
ill done, you would be proud of it, you would be proud of it. But I have
no such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking
haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of
his prosperity and respect. Let his children have that clue to what he
was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed
look--they say such things happen, I don't know--my children will have
never seen me.'

'Father, father!'

'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop
me, blush for me, cry for me--even you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to
myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for
that.'

'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to
him with her arms, and she got him to drop into his chair again, and
caught at the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck.

'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only
think of me, father, for one little moment!'

Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking
down into a miserable wh