om along, Missie!"

And entirely regardless of his wife's entreaties, the old Methodist
resolutely opened the kitchen door, and beckoned to Felicia. He was lame
now and walked with a stick, his shoulders bent. But he neither paused,
nor spoke to her again. Murmuring to himself, he led her along the inner
passage, and opened the door into the great gallery.

A blaze of light and colour, a rush of heated air. Felicia was dazzled by
the splendour of the great show within--the tapestries, the pictures, the
gleaming reflections on lacquer and intarsia, on ebony or Sevres. But the
atmosphere was stifling. Melrose now could only live in the temperature
of a hothouse.

Dixon threw open a door, and without a word beckoned to Felicia to enter.
He hesitated a moment, evidently as to whether he should announce her;
and then, stepping forward, he cleared his throat.

"Muster Melrose, theer's soom one as wants to speak to you!"

"What do you mean, you old fool!" said a deep, angry voice on the other
side of a great lacquer screen; "didn't I tell you I wasn't to be
disturbed?"

Felicia walked round the screen. Dixon, with an excited look at her,
retired through the door which he closed behind him.

"Father!" said Felicia, in a low, trembling voice.

An old man who was writing at a large inlaid table, in the midst of a
confusion of objects which the girl's eyes had no time to take in, turned
sharply at the sound.

The two stared at each other. Melrose slowly revolved on his chair, pen
in hand. Felicia stood, with eyes downcast, her cheeks burning, her hands
lightly clasped.

Melrose spoke first.

"H'm--so they've sent _you_ here?"

She looked up.

"No one sent me. I--I wished to see you--before we went away; because you
are my father--and I mightn't ever see you--if I didn't now. And I wanted
to ask you"--her voice quivered--"not to be angry any more with mother
and me. We never meant to vex you--by coming. But we were so poor--and
mother is ill. Yes, she _is_ ill!--she is--it's no shamming. Won't you
forgive us?--won't you give mother a little more money?--and won't
you"--she clasped her hands entreatingly--"won't you give me a _dot_? I
may want to be married--and you are so rich? And I wouldn't ever trouble
you again--I--"

She broke off, intimidated, paralyzed by the strange fixed look of the
old wizard before her--his flowing hair, his skullcap, his white and
sunken features. And yet mysteriously she recognized he