ght of a new discovery, that
in the past her father's irritability had not extended to her. And this
discovery, she knew, ought to have some significance, but she felt
unaccountably indifferent to it. Mr. Flint walked to a window at the far
end of the room and flung apart the tightly closed curtains before it.

"I never can get used to this new-fangled way of shutting everything up
tight," he declared. "When I lived in Centre Street, I used to read with
the curtains up every night, and nobody ever shot me." He stood looking
out at the starlight for awhile, and turned and faced her again.

"I haven't seen much of you this summer, Victoria," he remarked.

"I'm sorry, father. You know I always like to walk with you every day you
are here." He had aroused her sufficiently to have a distinct sense that
this was not the time to refer to the warning she had given him that he
was working too hard. But he was evidently bent on putting this
construction on her answer.

"Several times I have asked for you, and you have been away," he said.

"If you had only let me know, I should have made it a point to be at
home."

"How can I tell when these idiots will give me any rest?" he asked. He
crushed the telegrams again, and came down the room and stopped in front
of her. "Perhaps there has been a particular reason why you have not been
at home as much as usual."

"A particular reason?" she repeated, in genuine surprise.

"Yes," he said; "I have been hearing things which, to put it mildly, have
astonished me."

"Hearing things?"

"Yes," he exclaimed. "I may be busy, I may be harassed by tricksters and
bunglers, but I am not too busy not to care something about my daughter's
doings. I expect them to deceive me, Victoria, but I pinned my faith
somewhere. I pinned it on you. On you, do you understand?"

She raised her head for the first time and looked at him, with her lips
quivering. But she did not speak.

"Ever since you were a child you have been everything to me, all I had to
fly to. I was always sure of one genuine, disinterested love--and that
was yours. I was always sure of hearing the truth from your lips."

"Father!" she cried.

He seemed not to hear the agonized appeal in her voice. Although he spoke
in his usual tones, Augustus Flint was, in fact, beside himself.

"And now," he said, "and now I learn that you have been holding
clandestine meetings with a man who is my enemy, with a man who has done
me more harm