Cynthia looked round at her visitor with a sort of timidity which she did not often exhibit. He was apparently about sixty years of age, broad-shouldered, and muscularly built, but with a stiffness of gait which seemed to be either the result of chronic rheumatism or of an accident which had partially disabled him. His face was brown, his eyes were dark and bright; but his hair and beard were almost white, although his eyebrows had not a grizzled tint. He was roughly but respectably dressed, and looked like a prosperous yeoman or an artisan of the better class. Cynthia glanced at him keenly, then seemed to gain confidence, and asked him to sit down. The visitor obeyed; but Cynthia continued standing, with her hands on the back of a heavy chair. "Mr. Reuben Dare?" she said at length, as the old man did not speak. "Come straight from Ameriky," said he--he sat bolt-upright on his chair, and looked at the girl with a steady interest and curiosity which almost embarrassed her--"and promised to look you up as soon as I got over here. Can you guess who 'twas I promised, missy?" Cynthia grew first red and then white. "No," she said; "I am not sure that I can." "Is there nobody belonging to you that you haven't heard of for years and years?" "Yes," said Cynthia; "I think perhaps there is." "A man," said Mr. Reuben Dare, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, and trying to subdue his rather harsh voice to quietness--"a man as was related to you, maybe?" "If you will say what you mean, I think I can answer you better," said Cynthia. "Do you think I am going to say what I mean until I know what sort of a young woman you are, and how you'll take the news I bring you?" said the man. With a somewhat savage and truculent air he drew his eyebrows down over his eyes as he spoke; but there was a touch of something else as well--of stirred emotion, of doubt, of troubled feeling--which dissipated Cynthia's fears at once. She left the chair which she had been grasping with one hand, and came closer to her visitor. "I see that you are afraid to trust me," she said quickly. "You think that perhaps I am hard and worldly, and do not want to have anything to do with my relatives? That is not true. You are thinking--speaking--of my poor father perhaps. As long as I was a child--a mere girl--I did not think much about him, I was content to believe what people told me--not that he was guilty--I never believed that!--but that I could do nothing for him, and that I had better not interfere. When I was independent and beginning to think for myself--about six months ago--I found out what I might have done. Shall I go on to tell you what I did?" "Yes, yes--go on!" The man's voice was husky; his wrinkled hand trembled as it lay upon his knee. He watched the girl's face with hungry eyes.