ather--on his cruel
old heart? Such things do happen. It's silly to say they don't. "I _am_
pretty--and now my clothes are all right--and my hands have come nearly
white. He'll see I'm not a girl to be ashamed of. And if my father did
give me a _dot_--why then I'd send my mother to _his_ mother! That's how
we'd do it in Italy. I'm as well-born as he--nearly--and if I had a
_dot_--"

The yellow-haired girl at any rate was quite out of the way. No one spoke
of her; no one mentioned her. That was all right.

And as to Threlfall and her father, if she was able to soften him at all
it would not be in the least necessary to drive that bad young man, Mr.
Faversham, to despair. Compromise--bargaining--settle most things. She
fell to imagining--with a Latin clearness and realism--how it might be
handled. Only it would have to be done before her father died. For if Mr.
Faversham once took all the money and all the land, there would be no
_dot_ for her, even if he were willing to give it her. For Lord Tatham
would never take a farthing from Mr. Faversham, not even through his
wife. "And so it would be no use to me," thought Felicia, quietly, but
regretfully.

Whitebeck station. Out she tripped, asked her way to Threlfall,
and hurried off into the dark, followed by the curious looks of the
station-master.

She was soon at the park gate, and passed through it with a beating
heart. She had heard of the bloodhounds; and the sound of a bark in the
distance--though it was only the collie at the farm--gave her a start of
terror.

The Whitebeck gate was but a short distance from the house, and as
she turned a corner, the Tower rose suddenly before her. She held her
breath; it looked so big, so darkly magnificent. She thought of all the
tales that had been told her, the rooms full of silver and gold--the
_arazzi_--the _stucchi_--the cabinets and sculpture. She had grown up in
an atmosphere of perpetual bric-a-brac; she had seen the big Florentine
shops; she could imagine what it was like.

There were lights in two of the windows; and the smoke from several
chimneys rose wind-beaten against the woods behind. The moon stood
immediately over the roof, and the shadow of the house stretched beyond
the forecourt almost to her feet.

She lingered a few minutes, fascinated, gazing at this huge place where
her father lived--her father whom she had never seen since she was a
baby. The moon lit up her tiny figure, and her small white face, a