idn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the
money, all but the little I've had to use--"

There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in
the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she
flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and
kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with
a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not
simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them.

Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over
her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their
lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity.

Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed
to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She
praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for
advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that
last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She
praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for
doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the
Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and
she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there
never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she
wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him.
He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and
Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!"

"Go?" Adeline echoed.

"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him.

They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the
face.

Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her
words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's _got_ to go! Oh, Suzette,
let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!"

"It's prison _there_" said Northwick. "Let me stay!"

"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What
makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as
anything, I do it."

"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better,
or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I
won't _let_ you think of me!"

"But what would they say--Mr. Hilary say--if they sent father to
prison?"

Suz