you see what I have come to."

"I am deeply sorry."

"When you came before," said Herresford, bluntly, "I liked the look of
you, Miss Dora; and I said to myself that, if Dick was not a fool and
blind, he would choose you for his wife."

"Don't! Don't!" cried Dora, with a sudden catch in her voice. "I'm
engaged to marry Mr. Ormsby."

"An excellent match--a match that does credit to your head, my girl. But
Ormsby is not a man--he's only a machine. He thinks too much of his
money. With him, it's money, money--all money. A bad thing! A bad
thing!"

Dora opened her eyes wide in surprise, wondering if she heard aright. Was
this the miser?

"Now, Dick was a man--and he died like a gentleman--with his back to the
wall--hurling defiance at the muzzles of the enemy's rifles."

Dora bowed her head, and the tears began to fall. She raised her muff to
her face to hide the spasm of pain that distorted her features.

"Ah! a boy worth crying for, my dear," said the old man, dragging
himself with difficulty to the edge of the bed; "but a shocking
spendthrift. That's where we quarreled--though we never quarreled much. I
had my say--the boy had his. Sometimes I was hard, and sometimes he was
harder. The taunts of the young cut the old deeper than the taunts of the
old cut the young. Do you follow me?"

Dora nodded.

"Now, if he had married a wife like you, a girl with a level head and a
stiff upper lip, a girl with not sufficient sentiment to make her a fool,
nor enough brains to be a prig, but just clever enough to supply her
husband's deficiencies, he would have been my heir, and this place and
all my money would have been his--and yours."

"Why do you tell me these things, now?" she cried, a note of anger in her
voice.

"Because I don't want you to marry Ormsby."

"Why not? It is to please my father. He wishes it, and--I must marry
somebody. I'm not going to be an old maid. I shall never love anybody as
I loved Dick, and I might as well recognize the fact."

"Then, take the advice of an old man who married a woman who loved
someone else. My wife married to please her father--married me. As my
wife, she hated me. I hated her. She brought up my daughter to look upon
me as a monster. Everything I did was unreasonable, eccentric, wicked;
everything I said, absurd; every admonition, harshness; every economy,
meanness. Well; I'm the sort of man that, when people pull me one way, I
go the other. She spoiled my life, and I c