t confidently now," said Carroll,
"I shall meet all my indebtedness. You will have no reason to
hesitate on that account," but he paused a moment. "I am driven to
resorting to any honest method which I can find to enable me so to
do," he continued. He made a slight emphasis upon the word honest.

"I can understand that as fully, possibly, as any man," Anderson
replied, gravely.

Carroll looked at him. "Yes, so you can," he said--"so you can. Well,
this much I will say for myself, Mr. Anderson. I am proud and glad to
confide my daughter to your keeping. I am satisfied, and more than
satisfied, with her choice."

"Thank you," replied Anderson. He felt a constraint, even
embarrassment, as if he had been a very young man. He was even
conscious of blushing a little.

"Sit down," said Carroll, placing a chair for him, and offering him a
cigar.

Then he went to call Charlotte. It was at that moment rather a hard
experience for Charlotte that it was not her mother instead of her
father who called her to go down and see her lover. She had thought,
with a passion of yearning, of her mother who had done the same
thing, and would understand, as she fluffed out her pretty hair
around her face in front of the glass in her room. When her father
called her she ran down, but instead of going at once into the
parlor, where she knew her lover was waiting for her, she ran into
the den. She felt sure that her father had retreated there. She found
him there, as she had thought, and she flung her arms around his neck.

"I am never going to leave you alone, you know, papa," she whispered.

"Yes, dear."

"Papa, come in there with me."

Carroll laughed then. "Run along, honey," he said, and gave her a
kiss, and pushed her softly out of the room.

Chapter XLII

Carroll, left alone, lighted another cigar from force of habit. It
was one of the abominably cheap ones which he had been smoking lately
when by himself. He never offered one to anybody else. But soon the
cigar went out and he never noticed it. He sat in a deep-hollowed
chair before a fireless hearth, and the strange expression upon his
face deepened. It partook of at once exaltation and despair. He heard
the soft murmur of voices from the parlor where the lovers were. He
reflected that he should tell Anderson, before he married Charlotte,
the purpose in his mind; that he owed it to him, since that purpose
might quite reasonably cause a man to change his own plans with