le, and enrages
the others--is all gone! Not a trace of it remains. It has given place
to terror, open and unrestrained.

"A girl!" murmurs he in a feeble tone, falling back in his chair. And
then again, in a louder tone of dismay--"A _girl_!" He pauses again, and
now again gives way to the fear that is destroying him--"A _grown_
girl!"

After this, he seems too overcome to continue his reflections, so goes
back to the fatal letter. Every now and then, a groan escapes him,
mingled with mournful remarks, and extracts from the sheet in his hand--

"Poor old Wynter! Gone at last!" staring at the shaking signature at the
end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icy clutch that
should prevent the poor hand from forming ever again even such sadly
erratic characters as these. "At least," glancing at the half-read
letter on the cloth--"_this_ tells me so. His solicitor's, I suppose.
Though what Wynter could want with a solicitor----Poor old fellow! He
was often very good to me in the old days. I don't believe I should have
done even as much as I _have_ done, without him.... It must be fully ten
years since he threw up his work here and went to Australia! ... ten
years. The girl must have been born before he went,"--glances at
letter--"'My child, my beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love,
will be left entirely alone. Her mother died nine years ago. She is only
seventeen, and the world lies before her, and never a soul in it to care
how it goes with her. I entrust her to you--(a groan). To you I give
her. Knowing that if you are living, dear fellow, you will not desert me
in my great need, but will do what you can for my little one.'"

"But what is that?" demands the professor, distractedly. He pushes his
spectacles up to the top of his head, and then drags them down again,
and casts them wildly into the sugar-bowl. "What on earth am I to do
with a girl of seventeen? If it had been a boy! even _that_ would have
been bad enough--but a girl! And, of course--I know Wynter--he has died
without a penny. He was bound to do that, as he always lived without
one. _Poor_ old Wynter!"--as if a little ashamed of himself. "I don't
see how I can afford to put her out to nurse." He pulls himself up with
a start. "To nurse! a girl of seventeen! She'll want to be going out to
balls and things--at her age."

As if smitten to the earth by this last awful idea, he picks his glasses
out of the sugar and goes back to the le