again--but slowly rose and slowly crossed the little room to the crude
table and took from it her handbag, which, when M'riar had cleared off
the dinner things, she had replaced where it had been when she had
started, first, to lay the table. As she raised the bag her father's
eyes were fixed upon her in an agony of dread.

Trembling with apprehension, her fingers shaking so that it was with
great difficulty that she managed the bag's clasp, she opened the
receptacle, and, with accelerating nervousness which made her feel and
fumble, took from it a small box--a jeweler's box. Slowly she returned
to him, her feet dragging as if weighted; slowly, as she stood before
him, drooping, frightened, she took off the cover of the little box,
her heart hammering till it seemed as if it must burst from her
breast; slowly, then, with trembling fingers, while her eyes remained
steadfastly downcast and the quick rising, falling, of her delicately
rounded, girlish bosom showed how keen her agitation was, she took
from the opened box a sparkling trinket.

"You will understand me, father, when I show you--"

She held the brilliant bauble towards him, and, as she stretched out
her hand a hundred little facets on the glittering thing caught light,
there in the gloomy tenement house room, and blazed and sparkled as
with inner fires.

"Look, father."

The old flute-player stretched a wondering hand to take the trinket.
He could not understand, at all, what all this meant. What had the
thing to do with her great agitation? How came she with so valuable a