evening of it! Ach, drives me--it grows tiresome, Anna."

"Some day, father, you will not play there," she said with emphasis.
"Some day will come fortune to us--some day."

"Yes; perhaps; some day. But there is something finer than a fortune,
Anna. I have been thinking, thinking, thinking, lately, of your
mother, Anna. How delighted she would be to see you, now, with your
dark hair! Why, Anna, it is almost black! So delighted she would be!
It was blonde when you were born--blonde, fair like mine, before mine
turned to white; but hers was dark, as yours is now, and I think that
when she saw that yours was light she was a little disappointed till
her old nurse told her that in early years her own hair had been as
yours was. You were one year old, my Anna, before your hair began to
show the brown."

"Do you like it, father?"

"Like it? Ah, I love it! But--I am worried."

"Worried?"

"Yes. Always in the past have I been with you. Now you are alone and
beautiful. And of life you know so little, while of love--you
know--ah, nothing!"

Anna was not sure of this. She had been wondering, indeed, if she did
not know much of it. It startled her to have her father speak of it.
There had been tremors in her heart, hot flushes in her cheeks, dim
mists before her eyes when she had thought about young Vanderlyn, of