now. Do you promise?"

"You can forbid me. I must do what you say."

"I do forbid you, then. And you shall not think I am cruel----"

"How could I think that?"

"Oh, how hard you make it!"

Corey laughed for very despair. "Can I make it easier by disobeying
you?"

"I know I am talking crazily. But I'm not crazy."

"No, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; "but try to
tell me this trouble! There is nothing under heaven--no calamity, no
sorrow--that I wouldn't gladly share with you, or take all upon myself
if I could!"

"I know! But this you can't. Oh, my----"

"Dearest! Wait! Think! Let me ask your mother--your father----"

She gave a cry.

"No! If you do that, you will make me hate you! Will you----"

The rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door.

"Promise!" cried Penelope.

"Oh, I promise!"

"Good-bye!" She suddenly flung her arms round his neck, and, pressing
her cheek tight against his, flashed out of the room by one door as her
father entered it by another.

Corey turned to him in a daze. "I--I called to speak with you--about a
matter----But it's so late now. I'll--I'll see you to-morrow."

"No time like the present," said Lapham, with a fierceness that did not
seem referable to Corey. He had his hat still on, and he glared at the
young man out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must
have kindled there.

"I really can't now," said Corey weakly. "It will do quite as well
to-morrow. Good night, sir."

"Good night," answered Lapham abruptly, following him to the door, and
shutting it after him. "I think the devil must have got into pretty
much everybody to-night," he muttered, coming back to the room, where
he put down his hat. Then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called
down, "Hello, Alice! I want something to eat!"

XVII.

"WHAT's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more?"
asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning. He had
been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry
man. "It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing. Here I am, at my
time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring the bell for the
cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the
table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see
anybody but you till I go to the office."

"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly. "The girls are nearly
always down