orry to leave the Big
House either.

"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own
stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way that
Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I do
believe she'll marry the man some day."

To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's health.

"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the man. He
would have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't hear of it.
He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and talking about a
great entertainment."

"Entertainment?"

"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to know
that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of your
coming home after your marriage--that's all it's to be on the outside,
anyway."

I made some cry of pain, and Aunt Bridget said:

"Oh, I know what you're going to say--why doesn't he wait? I'll tell you
why if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any one. Your father is a
sick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes when Conrad talks about
cancer, he knows Death's hand is over him. And thinking it may fall
before your time has come, he wants to take time by the forelock and see
a sort of fulfilment of the hope of his life--and you know what that
is."

It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father was now
so tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my heart that I
might never look upon his face again.

I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit my
father came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the lawn
when his big car came rolling up the drive.

I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly white, his
lips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to have sunk into
his shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his clothes seemed to
hang on them; but the stern mouth was there still, and so was the
masterful lift of the eyebrows.

Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said:

"Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn't take rest without
putting a sight on you."

After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always was
and will be (about it's being good for a woman to have children because
it saved her from "losing her stomach" over imaginary grievances), he
led me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to show
to my mother, back to the h