one tries to make him suffer more he does worse than
Tedham did, and he's flying in the face of Providence. Perhaps it's so.
I'm afraid," Hasketh continued, with the satisfaction men take in
blaming their wives under the cover of sympathy, "that Mrs. Hasketh is
going to feel it more and more, as time goes on, unless Tedham turns up.
I was never in favor of trying to have the child forget him, or be
separated from him in any way. That kind of thing can't be made to work,
and I don't suppose, when you come to boil it down, that it's
essentially right. This universe, I take it, isn't an accident in any
particular, and if she's his daughter it's because she was meant to be,
and to bear and share with him. You see it was a great mistake not to
prepare the child for it sooner, and tell her just when Tedham would be
out, so that if she wanted to see him she could. She thinks she ought to
have been there at the prison waiting to speak to him the first one. I
thought it was a mistake to have her away, and I guess that's the way
Mrs. Hasketh looks at it herself, now."

A stir of garments made itself heard from the parlor at last, and we
knew the ladies had risen. In a loud voice Hasketh began to say that
they had a carriage down at the gate, and I said they had better let me
show them the way down; and as my wife followed the others into the
hall, I pulled open the outer door for them. On the threshold stood a
man about to ring, who let his hand drop from the bell-pull. "Why,
Tedham!" I shouted, joyfully.

The light from the hall-lamp struck full on his face; we all
involuntarily shrank back, except the girl, who looked, not at the man
before her, but first at her aunt and then at her uncle, timorously, and
murmured some inaudible question. They did not answer, and now Tedham
and his daughter looked at each other, with what feeling no one can ever
fully say.

VIII.

It always seemed to me as if we had witnessed something like the return
of one from the dead, in this meeting. We were talking it over one
evening some weeks later, and "It would be all very well," I
philosophized, "if the dead came back at once, but if one came back
after ten years, it would be difficult."

"It was worse than coming back from the dead," said my wife. "But I hope
that is the end of it so far as we are concerned. I am sure I am glad to
be out of it, and I don't wish to see any of them ever again."

"Why, I don't know about that," I returned, a