Why could not she? It was not as if he were at fault; no one
dared breathe a word against his fair fame. To look at his strong,
handsome face meant confidence. That was when he left the room.

Some one else had left the room also. Some one who had loved her all
her life, some one who had grown accustomed in more than twenty years to
listen gladly for her voice, to anticipate every wish, to hold her as
in the palm of a loving hand, to look for and rest on her unquestioned
love. He too had left the room; but he was not strong and handsome,
poor, poor old father with his small bent shoulders. What a wretched
thing it is to be old and have the heart-strings that have so
confidently twisted themselves all these years around another rudely cut
off,--and that by your only child!

At the thought an icy quiet stole over her. How long she sat there,
musing, debating, she did not know. When the gray dawn broke, she rose
up calmly and seated herself at her writing-table. She wrote steadily
for some time without erasing a single word. She addressed the envelope
without a falter over the name.

"That is over," she said audibly and deliberately.

A cock crowed. It was the beginning of another day.

Chapter XIX

Dr. Kemp tossed the reins to his man, sprang from his carriage, and
hurried into his house. "Burke!" he called while closing the door,
"Burke!" He walked toward the back of the house and into the kitchen,
still calling. Finding it empty, he walked back again and began a
still hunt about the pieces of furniture in the various rooms. Being
unsuccessful, he went into his bedroom, made a hasty toilet, and hurried
again to the kitchen.

"Where have you been, Burke?" he exclaimed as that spare-looking
personage turned, spoon in hand, from the range.

"Right here, General," he replied in surprise, "except when I went out."

"Well; did any mail come here for me?"

"One little Billy-do, General. I put it under your dinner-plate; and
shall I serve the soup?" the last was bellowed after his master's
retreating form.

"Wait till I ring," he called back.

He lifted his solitary plate, snatched up the little letter, and sat
down hastily, conscious of a slight excitement.

His name and address stared at him from the white envelope in a round,
firm hand. There was something about the loop-letters that reminded him
of her, and he passed his hand caressingly over the surface. He did not
break the seal for some minutes,--antic