"Plenty, father," she answered, lifting her eyes from her work, and
looking at him mournfully; "plenty--for you."

The man shrugged his shoulders, and sighed heavily.

"It's too late for that, my girl," he said; "the day is past--the day is
past and gone--and the chance gone with it. You know how I've striven,
and worked, and struggled; and how I've seen my poor schemes crushed
when I had built them up with more patience than perhaps man ever built
before. You've been a good girl, Margaret--a noble girl; and you've been
true to me alike in joy and sorrow--the joy's been little enough beside
the sorrow, poor child--but you've borne it all; you've endured it all.
You've been the truest woman that was ever born upon this earth, to my
thinking; but there's one thing in which you've been unlike the rest of
your sex."

"And what's that, father?"

"You've shown no curiosity. You've seen me knocked down and disgraced
wherever I tried to get a footing; you've seen me try first one trade
and then another, and fail in every one of them. You've seen me a clerk
in a merchant's office; an actor; an author; a common labourer, working
for a daily wage; and you've seen ruin overtake me whichever way I've
turned. You've seen all this, and suffered from it; but you've never
asked me why it has been so. You've never sought to discover the secret
of my life."

The tears welled up to the girl's eyes as her father spoke.