sit to the house after her
mother's death, when he had no real business to transact. "Poor little
mite!" he thought; "she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to
love save her father, to whom she is merely 'the child.'"

It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane
snap out, "Take away that child; it's troublesome."

"Nay, nay," Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to
his knee, "let me have the darling a minute."

"Richards, you're a fool!" Keane would growl.

And with one arm round her protector's neck, her cheeks wet with tears,
the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural
father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories
he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered
heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a
boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!

But the psychical mystery is how she could have come to love her father
so. Yes, as the reader already knows, she did love him, and love him to
that extent that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to his
ambition, and marry a man whom she loathed if she did actually not
detest.

A bachelor, with no expenses worth naming, Richards had saved quite a
small fortune in his time; and when he came to find out that Keane was
going positively to sell his daughter to the worn-out _roue_ Sir Digby,
that for his own advancement he might see her ere long a lord's wife,
Richards thumped his fist down on his desk--he was alone at the
time--till even the big ink-bottle leaped an inch up from the table.

"I'll save that darling child," he had said, "if I spend every penny I
have earned, and lose my life into the bargain."

He smiled to himself a moment after.

"Everything is fair in love and war," he said: "I'll play a game. The
cause is good. Yes, Jack Mackenzie, my open-hearted, frank, brave boy,
you shall marry Gerty. I have said it--you--_shall_."

He laughed aloud next minute at his own enthusiasm.

"What a capital actor I should have made!" he thought. "How beautifully
I could have done heavy fathers!"

Still waters run deep, and Richards was astute, though perhaps he did
not look it. So he began at once to shuffle his cards for the game he
was about to play--a game which he rightly judged was to be one of life
or death. For he shuddered to think of the living death to which the
selfishness of he