could be
glad to marry Mr. Anderson."

"Then I am very glad, sweetheart," Carroll said, with a curious
quietness, almost weariness.

"His mother is lovely, too," said Charlotte.

"That is nice, dear, for I suppose you will live with them."

"When Amy and the others come back," said Charlotte. "I am not ever
going to leave you, papa. You know it, don't you?"

"Yes, sweetheart," said Carroll, still with the same curious, weary
quiet.

Charlotte looked at him anxiously. "Does your head ache now, papa?"
she asked.

"No, dear."

"But you don't feel well. You are very pale."

"I feel a little weak, that is all, dear."

"You will feel better when you have had dinner. Mrs. Anderson came
home with me, she and her maid, and she gave me some lovely thin
slices of ham, and there is an oyster-stew, and some tea. Sit down,
papa dear, and we will have dinner right away."

Carroll made a superhuman effort to eat that dinner, but still the
look whose strangeness rather than paleness puzzled Charlotte never
left his face. She kept looking at him.

"You won't go to New York again to-morrow, will you, papa?" said she.

"No, dear. I don't think so."

"I wish you wouldn't go again this week, papa. To-day is Thursday."

"Perhaps I won't, dear."

After dinner Carroll lay down on the divan in the den and Charlotte
covered him up, and after a while he fell asleep; but even asleep,
when she stole in to look at him, there was the same strange
expression on his face. It was the face of a man whose mind is set
irrevocably to an end. A martyr going to the stake might have had
that same look, or even a criminal who was going to his doom with a
sense of its being his just deserts, and with the bravery that
befitted a man.

That evening Anderson came to call, and Carroll answered the
door-bell. He took him into the parlor, and spoke at once of the
subject uppermost in the minds of both.

"Charlotte has told me," Carroll said, simply. He extended his hand
with a pathetic, deprecatory air. "You know what you are doing when
you ask for my daughter's hand," he said. "You know she might have a
parentage which would reflect more credit upon her."

"I am quite satisfied," Anderson replied, in a low voice. All at
once, looking at the other man, it struck him that he had never in
his life pitied any one to such an extent, and that he pitied him all
the more because Carroll seemed one to resent pity.

"This much I will say--I can say i