sts back, and defer her amusement till another time in
the day.

Meals were served now for the colonel and his daughter in this same
room, which served for sitting-room and library. The dining-room was
disused. Things had come by degrees to this irregularity, Mrs. Barker
finding that it made her less work, and the colonel in his sorrowful
abstraction hardly knowing and not at all caring where he took his
dinner. The dinner was carefully served, however, and delicately
prepared; for there Barker's pride came in to her help; and besides,
little as Colonel Gainsborough attended now to the food he ate, it is
quite possible that he would have rebelled against any disorder in that
department of the household economy.

The meal times were sorrowful occasions to both the solitary personages
who now sat down to the table. Neither of them had become accustomed
yet to the empty place at the board. The colonel ate little and talked
none at all; and only Esther's honest childish appetite saved these
times from being seasons of intolerable gloom. Even so, she was always
glad when dinner was done.

By the time that it was over to-day, and the table cleared, Esther's
mood had changed; and she no longer found the box of casts attractive.
She had seen what was in it so often before, and she knew just what she
should find. At the same time she was in desperate want of something to
amuse her, or at least to pass away the time, which went so slowly if
unaided. She bethought her of trying another box, or series of boxes,
over which she had seen her father and mother spend hours together; but
the contents hitherto had not seemed to her interesting. The key was on
the same chain with the key of the casts; Esther sat down on the floor
by one of the windows, having shoved one of the boxes into that
neighbourhood, turned the key, and opened the cover. Her father was
lying on the couch again and gave her no attention, and Esther made no
call upon him for help.

An hour or two had passed. Esther had not changed her place, and the
box, which contained a quantity of coins, was still open; but the
child's hands lay idly in her lap, and her eyes were gazing into
vacancy. Looking back, perhaps, at the images of former days; smiling
images of light and love, in scenes where her mother's figure filled
all the foreground. Colonel Gainsborough did not see how the child sat
there, nor what an expression of dull, hopeless sorrow lay upon her
features. Al