rah; but she was pleased all the same; for though she
was not in the least vain of her good looks--which she would have
exchanged willingly for Horatia's parentage--she liked to be admired, and
she walked on, feeling very satisfied with herself.

Naomi looked after her admiringly. 'There's not a young lady can hold a
candle to her in all the county. But wherever's she going? Why, that's
not the way to the drawing-room; she's going to the master's room. Well,
it isn't often she pays him a visit, and it mostly ends badly, if it
doesn't begin so. How she comes to be his daughter I can't think; she's
too good for the like of him. I'd sooner have believed she was a duke's
daughter,' she soliloquised.

Meanwhile Sarah, conscious that she was doing a noble action in
conquering her own feelings, walked on, as Naomi had said, to her
father's special sitting-room, which he called his study, but in which
his only study was how to make more money.

Sarah tapped at the door, and her father's voice growled something which
she took to be an invitation to come in, so she opened the door and
entered the room; but on the threshold she paused and hesitated. Her
father was sitting in his big easy-chair in front of his bureau, writing.
He did not look up at once, thinking it was a servant, who could wait his
pleasure, and Sarah had time to notice his forbidding expression. It
seemed to her that her father had never looked more unlovable, as he sat
there with a scowl on his face, writing no doubt letters to the police or
whatever authorities he wished to invoke aid from to punish the
incendiaries; and as he wrote such a malignant and fierce expression came
over his face that Sarah made a movement to retreat; but the noise she
made in doing so attracted Mr Clay's attention, and, looking up sharply,
he exclaimed, 'What! you, Sally?' and laid down his pen to hear what his
daughter had to say to him.

'Yes, father; I came to tell you how sorry I am about all this affair
to-day,' she said.

Mr Clay looked keenly and a little suspiciously at his daughter. She
stood there, looking so like a culprit apologising for her misdeeds, that
the thought flashed across him that perhaps she had something to be
sorry for. She made no secret of her sympathy with the 'hands,' and she
had not expressed sorrow or indignation at the time, so that the
mill-owner may be excused if he believed for the moment that she had had
something to do with the fire.

'Are