well,
for her father's coming had brought a weight of depression with it. Why
could he not have spoken one word to her, even a cross one? She knew
that he did not love her, yet, merely as a fellow-being, she was
entitled to a measure of courtesy; and the fact that she was his
daughter could not excuse his failure to render it. Was she to continue
to live with him on their present terms? She had no intention to make
another effort to alter them; but to remain as they were would be
intolerable, and Mrs. Tanberry could not stay forever, to act as a
buffer between her and her father. Peering out into the dismal night,
she found her own future as black, and it seemed no wonder that the
Sisters loved the convent life; that the pale nuns forsook the world
wherein there was so much useless unkindness; where women were petty
and jealous, like that cowardly Fanchon, and men who looked great were
tricksters, like Fanchon's betrothed. Miss Betty clenched her delicate
fingers. She would not remember that white, startled face again!

Another face helped her to shut out the recollection: that of the man
who had come to mass to meet her yesterday morning, and with whom she
had taken a long walk afterward. He had shown her a quaint old English
gardener who lived on the bank of the river, had bought her a bouquet,
and she had helped him to select another to send to a sick friend. How
beautiful the flowers were, and how happy he had made the morning for
her, with his gayety, his lightness, and his odd wisdom! Was it only
yesterday? Her father's coming had made yesterday a fortnight old.

But the continuously pattering rain and the soft drip-drop from the
roof, though as mournful as she chose to find them, began, afterwhile,
to weave their somnolent spells, and she slowly drifted from reveries
of unhappy sorts, into half-dreams, in which she was still aware she was
awake; yet slumber, heavy-eyed, stirring from the curtains beside her
with the small night breeze, breathed strange distortions upon familiar
things, and drowsy impossibilities moved upon the surface of her
thoughts. Her chin, resting upon her hand, sank gently, until her head
almost lay upon her relaxed arms.

"That is mine, Crailey Gray!"

She sprang to her feet, immeasurably startled, one hand clutching the
back of her chair, the other tremulously pressed to her cheek, convinced
that her father had stooped over her and shouted the sentence in her
ear. For it was his voic