At Love's Cost

"I'm sorry, father!" she said, laying her hand on his arm soothingly.

"It was not an ordinary poacher, only a gentleman who had mistaken the

Heron water for the Avory's. Come now, father, you have barely time to

dress."

"Yes, yes, I will come in a moment--a moment," he said.

But after she had left the room, he still lingered, and when at last he

got to the door, he closed it and went back to the cupboard and tried

it, to see if it were locked, muttering, suspiciously: "Did she hear me? She might have heard the rustle of the parchment, the

turn of the lock. Sometimes I think she suspects--But, no, no, she's a

child still, and she'd say something, speak out. No, no; it's all

right. Yes, yes, I'm coming, Ida!" he said aloud, as the girl called to

him on her way up the stairs.