I can not remember."

A heavy, halting step passed the door, and stopped there.

"What did that woman want, Mrs. Corliss?"

She started abruptly from her reverie, replying, hesitatingly.

"She wanted to see Miss Pluma, sir."

"Was Pluma so busily engaged she could not spare that poor creature a
moment or so?" he inquired, irritably. "Where is she?"

"In the parlor, sir."

With slow, feeble steps, more from weakness than age, Basil Hurlhurst
walked slowly down the corridor to the parlor.

It was seldom he left his own apartments of late, yet Pluma never
raised her superb eyes from the book of engravings which lay in her
lap as he entered the room.

A weary smile broke under his silver-white mustache.

"You do not seem in a hurry to bid me welcome, Pluma," he said,
grimly, throwing himself down into an easy-chair opposite her. "I
congratulate myself upon having such an affectionate daughter."

Pluma tossed aside her book with a yawn.

"Of course I am glad to see you," she replied, carelessly; "but you
can not expect me to go into ecstasies over the event like a child in
pinafores might. You ought to take it for granted that I'm glad you
are beginning to see what utter folly it is to make such a recluse of
yourself."

He bit his lip in chagrin. As is usually the case with invalids, he
was at times inclined to be decidedly irritable, as was the case just
now.

"It is you who have driven me to seek the seclusion of my own
apartments, to be out of sight and hearing of the household of
simpering idiots you insist upon keeping about you," he cried,
angrily. "I came back to Whitestone Hall for peace and rest. Do I get
it? No."

"That is not my fault," she answered, serenely. "You do not mingle
with the guests. I had no idea they could annoy you."

"Well, don't you suppose I have eyes and ears, even if I do not mingle
with the chattering magpies you fill the house up with? Why, I can
never take a ramble in the grounds of an evening without stumbling
upon a dozen or more pair of simpering lovers at every turn. I like
darkness and quiet. Night after night I find the grounds strung up
with these Chinese lanterns, and I can not even sleep in my bed for
the eternal brass bands at night; and in the daytime not a moment's
quiet do I get for these infernal sonatas and screeching trills of the
piano. I tell you plainly, I shall not stand this thing a day longer.
I am master of Whitestone Hall yet, and while I live I s