m, and discharge our whole duty towards
him in its delivery. This change in the woman who had hated him so
fiercely, but whose passion had worn itself down to the underlying
conscience with the lapse of time, certainly complicated the case. I was
silent; my wife said: "I don't know _what_ I should have done, Mrs.
Hasketh;" and Mrs. Hasketh resumed:

"If I did wrong in trying to separate her life from her father's, I was
punished for it, because when I wanted to undo my work, I didn't know
how to begin; I presume that's the worst of a wrong thing. Well, I never
did begin; but now I've got to. The time's come, and I presume it's as
easy now as it ever could be; easier. He's out and it's over, as far as
the law is concerned; and if she chooses she can see him. I'll prepare
her for it as well as I can, and he can come if she wishes it."

"Do you mean that he can see her _here_?" my wife asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Hasketh, with a sort of strong submission.

"At once? To-day?"

"No," Mrs. Hasketh faltered. "I didn't want him to see her just the
first day, or before I saw him; and I thought he might try to. She's
visiting at some friends in Providence; but she'll be back to-morrow. He
can come to-morrow night, if she says so. He can come and find out. But
if he was anything of a man he wouldn't want to."

"I'm afraid," I ventured, "he isn't anything of _that_ kind of man."

VI.

"Now, how unhandsome life is!" I broke out, at one point on our way
home, after we had turned the affair over in every light, and then
dropped it, and then taken it up again. "It's so graceless, so
tasteless! Why didn't Tedham die before the expiration of his term and
solve all this knotty problem with dignity? Why should he have lived on
in this shabby way and come out and wished to see his daughter? If there
had been anything dramatic, anything artistic in the man's nature, he
would have renounced the claim his mere paternity gives him on her love,
and left word with me that he had gone away and would never be heard of
any more. That was the least he could have done. If he had wanted to do
the thing heroically--and I wouldn't have denied him that
satisfaction--he would have walked into that pool in the old cockpit and
lain down among the autumn leaves on its surface, and made an end of the
whole trouble with his own burdensome and worthless existence. That
would truly have put an end to the evil he began."

"I wouldn't be--impious, Basil,"