lightening his load even a little.

"Father," she said, softly.

Raeburn was the sort of a man who could not be startled, but he
looked up quickly, apparently returning from some speculative
region with a slight effort. He was the most practical of men, and
yet for a minute he felt as if he were living in a dream, for Erica
stood beside him, pale and beautiful, with a sort of heroic light
about her whole face which transformed her from a merry child to a
high-souled woman. Instinctively he rose to speak to her.

"I will not disturb you for more than a minute, father," she said,
"it is only that I have thought of a way in which I think I could
help you if you would let me."

"Well, dear, what is it?" said Raeburn, still watching half
dreamily the exceeding beauty of the face before him. Yet an
undefined sense of dread chilled his heart. Was anything too hard
or high for her to propose? He listened without a word to her
account of M. Noirol's Parisian scheme, to her voluntary
suggestion that she should go into exile for two years. At the end
he merely put a brief question."Are you ready to bear two years of
loneliness?"

"I am ready to help you," she said, with a little quiver in her
voice and a cloud of pain in her eyes.

Raeburn turned away from her and began to pace up and down the
little room, his eyes not altogether free from tears, for,