her."

"So I do," said Lesley, the tears coming to her eyes. "But--I want to
stay, too. I want"--and she put both hands on his arms with a gesture as
affectionate as his own--"I want my father and mother both."

"I'm afraid that is an impossible wish."

"But why should it be?" said Lesley, looking up into his face
beseechingly.

His features twitched for a moment with unwonted emotion. "You know
nothing about it," he said--but he did not speak harshly. "You can't
judge of the circumstances. What can I do? Even if I asked her she would
not come back to me."

And then he put his daughter gently from him and went down to his study,
where he paced up and down the floor for a good half-hour, instead of
settling down as usual to his work.

But Lesley's words were not without their effect, although he had put
them aside so decidedly. With that young, fair face looking so
pleadingly into his own, it did not seem impossible that she should form
a new tie between himself and his wife. Of course he had always known
that children were conventionally supposed to bind the hearts of husband
and wife to each other; but in his own case he had not found that a
daughter produced that result. On the contrary, Lesley had been for many
years a sort of bone of contention between himself and his wife; and he
had retained a cynical sense of the futility of such conventional
utterances, which were every day contradicted by barefaced facts.

But now he began to acknowledge that Lesley was drawing his heart closer
to his wife. The charm of a family circle began to rise before him.
Pleasant, indeed, would it be to find that his dingy old house bore once
more the characteristics of a home; that womankind was represented in it
by fairer faces and softer voices than the face and voice even of dear
old Doctor Sophy, with her advanced theories, her committees, and her
brisk disregard of the amenities of life. Yes, he would give a good deal
to see Alice--it was long since he had thought of her by that
name--established in his drawing-room (which she should refurbish and
adorn to her heart's content), with Lesley by her side, and himself at
liberty to stroll in and out, to be smiled upon, and--yes, after all,
this was his dearest wish--to dare to lavish the love of which his great
heart was full upon the wife and child whose loss had been the
misfortune of his life.

As he thought of the past years, it seemed to him that they had been
very blea