he warning she had given him
that he was working too hard. But he was evidently bent on putting this
construction on her answer.

"Several times I have asked for you, and you have been away," he said.

"If you had only let me know, I should have made it a point to be at
home."

"How can I tell when these idiots will give me any rest?" he asked. He
crushed the telegrams again, and came down the room and stopped in front
of her. "Perhaps there has been a particular reason why you have not
been at home as much as usual."

"A particular reason?" she repeated, in genuine surprise.

"Yes," he said; "I have been hearing things which, to put it mildly,
have astonished me."

"Hearing things?"

"Yes," he exclaimed. "I may be busy, I may be harassed by tricksters
and bunglers, but I am not too busy not to care something about my
daughter's doings. I expect them to deceive me, Victoria, but I pinned
my faith somewhere. I pinned it on you. On you, do you understand?"

She raised her head for the first time and looked at him, with her lips
quivering. But she did not speak.

"Ever since you were a child you have been everything to me, all I had
to fly to. I was always sure of one genuine, disinterested love--and
that was yours. I was always sure of hearing the truth from your lips."

"Father!" she cried.

He seemed not to hear the agonized appeal in her voice. Although he
spoke in his usual tones, Augustus Flint was, in fact, beside himself.

"And now," he said, "and now I learn that you have been holding
clandestine meetings with a man who is my enemy, with a man who has done
me more harm than any other single individual, with a man whom I will
not have in my house--do you understand? I can only say that before
to-night, I gave him credit for having the decency not to enter it, not
to sit down at my table."

Victoria turned away from him, and seized the high oak shelf of the
mantel with both hands. He saw her shoulders rising and falling as her
breath came deeply, spasmodically--like sobbing. But she was not sobbing
as she turned again and looked into his face. Fear was in her eye, and
the high courage to look: fear and courage. She seemed to be looking at
another man, at a man who was not her father. And Mr. Flint, despite his
anger, vaguely interpreting her meaning, was taken aback. He had never
seen anybody with such a look. And the unexpected quiet quality of her
voice intensified his strange sensation.

"A Mr.