the idea a fuller appeal and consistency.

But he was tired--tired. He longed simply to drift. It was infinitely
distasteful to him definitely to plan, or to decide respecting anything.

Meanwhile his continued silence and abstraction wore badly upon Damaris.
She had steeled herself; had flamed, greatly daring. Now reaction set in.
Her effort proved vain. She had failed. For once more she recognized that
an unknown influence, a power dark and incalculably strong--so she
figured it--regained ascendency over her father, working to the insidious
changing of his nature, strangely winning him away. Waiting for some
response, some speech or comment on his part, fear and the sense of
helplessness assailed, and would have submerged her, had she not clung to
Carteret's parting "God bless you" and avowed faith in her stability, as
to a wonder-working charm. Nor did the charm fail in efficacy.--Oh!
really he was a wonderful sheet-anchor, "the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land," that dear man with the blue eyes! Consciously she blessed
him.--And, thanks to remembrance of him, presently found voice and
purpose once again.

"You aren't displeased with me, dearest?" she asked.

"Displeased?" Charles Verity repeated, at first absently. "Displeased, my
dear, no--why?"

"We didn't do wrong?"--labouring the point, the more fully to recall and
retain him--"Didn't take too much upon ourselves--Aunt Felicia, I mean,
and I--by persuading Darcy Faircloth to stay on Sunday, by entertaining
him when you were away? Or--or have I been stupid, dearest, and
thoughtlessly wearied you by talking too much and too long?"

"Neither," he said. "On the contrary, all you have told me goes to lessen
certain difficulties, make the crooked, in some degree, straight and
rough places plain."

For, if Faircloth had been here so recently, broken bread too in the
house, so he argued, it became the easier to bid him return. And Charles
Verity needed to see him, see him this morning--since purpose of
farewells, to be spoken in those long-deserted courts of romance,
stiffened, becoming a thing not merely to be turned hither and thither
in thought, but to be plainly and directly done.--"Send for him in your
own name," he said. "Explain to him how matters stand, and ask him to
talk with me."

And, as Damaris agreed, rejoiced by the success of her adventurous
diplomacy, making to go at once and give the required instructions--

"Stay--stay a moment," her