uite in the order of things--the curiously inverted order now
established, in which one thing was as likely as another--that her
father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing
at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he
might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.

"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.

"No, I didn't."

"Sha'n't you _have_ to go?"

There was an instant's hesitation.

"Perhaps not. In fact--I may almost definitely say--_not_. I should like
another cup of tea."

"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"

"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."

The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he
handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in
either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She
adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked
inside.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the question
a casual intonation.

"A great deal has happened." He allowed that statement to sink in
before continuing. "I think"--he paused long--"I think I'm going to get
the money."

She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar
landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily,
like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into
the kettle again to see if the water was yet boiling, taking longer than
necessary to peer into the quiet depth.

"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands with
an old friend. "I thought you would."

"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."

"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't
the slightest doubt of it."

Had he been a wise man he would have let it go at that. He was not,
however, a wise man. The shallow, brimming reservoir of his nature was
of the kind that spills over at a splash.

"The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to
my office to-day and offered to lend me--no, not to lend--practically to
_give_ me--enough money to pull me through."

She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her
astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city
which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again,
leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking out