ur father."

"Good gracious! what do you mean?"

"It is only right that you should know. That money represents the
commutation of your father's pension. He has reduced himself to poverty,
and intends to go to sea again to earn a living."

"To sea again! Impossible!"

"It is the truth. Charles Westmacott has told Ida. He was with him
in the City when he took his poor pension about from dealer to dealer
trying to sell it. He succeeded at last, and hence the money."

"He has sold his pension!" cried Harold, with his hands to his face. "My
dear old dad has sold his pension!" He rushed from the room, and burst
wildly into the presence of his parents once more. "I cannot take it,
father," he cried. "Better bankruptcy than that. Oh, if I had only known
your plan! We must have back the pension. Oh, mother, mother, how could
you think me capable of such selfishness? Give me the cheque, dad, and
I will see this man to-night, for I would sooner die like a dog in the
ditch than touch a penny of this money."

CHAPTER XVI. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was being played in
these three suburban villas, while on a commonplace stage love and humor
and fears and lights and shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other,
and while these three families, drifted together by fate, were shaping
each other's destinies and working out in their own fashion the strange,
intricate ends of human life, there were human eyes which watched over
every stage of the performance, and which were keenly critical of
every actor on it. Across the road beyond the green palings and the
close-cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their creeper-framed windows,
sat the two old ladies, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking
out as from a private box at all that was being enacted before them.
The growing friendship of the three families, the engagement of Harold
Denver with Clara Walker, the engagement of Charles Westmacott with her
sister, the dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over
the Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and the
unhappiness which they had caused their father, not one of these
incidents escaped the notice of the two maiden ladies. Bertha the
younger had a smile or a sigh for the lovers, Monica the elder a frown
or a shrug for the elders. Every night they talked over what they had
seen, and their own dull, uneventful life took a warmth and a coloring
from the