suddenly, there flooded back on her remembrance of the secret she must
tell him before she left the tenement that afternoon. It sobered her.
How would he take the news that she had not been content to wait for
him to bring to her his wonderful "brave gentleman?"

"Ah, you are thinking about weddings!" he said genially, still cutting
at the cake. For an instant she imagined that she had aroused
suspicions, but, quickly, she saw plainly that he was but lightly
jesting. "Have a care, my Anna! Have a care!"

Suddenly her heart was filled with resolution. When would there be a
better time than now in which to tell him her sweet secret? It could
not be that he would be so very angry. His love for her, his longing
that she might be happy, were, she knew, too great for that. And,
later, when he knew Jack Vanderlyn as well as she had come to know
him, he would realize, as she did, that nowhere in the world, not in
the castles of the barons on the Rhine, not in the palaces of kings,
could he or anyone find more genuine gentility than in this free-born
unpretending young American.

"Father!" she said timidly.

"My girl," said he, without the least suspicion that her heart could,
really, be touched by anyone in this cold land of crude democracy,
"you must always come and tell me if your heart begins to flutter like
a little bird. You--"

"Of--course, my father."

The matter had not in the least impressed him. As she turned and