“O papa, can you say ‘already’? What kind of creature must she think I am, never to have sent a word all these years?” He paused a moment and then said, “You have told her, I suppose?” “I have told her nothing except that I am ready to come whenever we can arrange how I am to travel. Papa,” she said, with one of those sudden relentings which come in the way of our sternest displeasure with those we love--“O papa,” laying her hand on his arm, “why did you do it? I am obliged to let her think that I have been without a heart all my life--for I cannot bear it when any one blames you.” “Frances,” he said, with a response equally sudden, putting his arm round her, “what will my life be without you? I have always trusted in you, depended on you without knowing it. Let Constance go back to her, and stay you with me.” Frances had not been accustomed to many demonstrations of affection, and this moved her almost beyond her power of self-control. She put down her head upon her father’s shoulder and cried, “Oh, if we could only go back a week! but we can’t; no, nor even half a day. Things that might have been this morning, can’t be now, papa! I was very, very angry--oh, in a rage--when I read these letters. Why did you keep them from me? Why did you keep my mother from me? I wrote and told her everything, and then I tore up my letter and told her nothing. But I can never be the same again,” said the girl, shaking her head with that conviction of the unchangeableness of a first trouble which is so strong in youth. “Now I know what it is to be one thing and appear another, and to bear blame and suffer for what you have not deserved.” Waring repented his appeal to his child. He repented even the sudden impulse which had induced him to make it. He withdrew his arm from her with a sudden revulsion of feeling, and a recollection that Constance was not emotional, but a young woman of the world, who would understand many things which Frances did not understand. He withdrew his arm, and said somewhat coldly, “Show me what address you have put upon your mother’s letter. You must not make any mistake in that.” Frances dried her eyes hastily, and felt the check. She put her letter before him without a word. It was addressed to Mrs Waring, no more.