The talk broke off at her impetuous entrance. Upon a chair sat a man with a round and ruddy face, with bright blue eyes and a curling spread of yellow beard. Lola hesitated. She doubted if this richly arrayed, somewhat stout man could be the slim, boyish-looking father she remembered. Then the unalterable joyousness of his glance reassured her, and she rushed forward crying, "Oh, it's you! It's you!" She had not noticed Jane, who sat opposite, mute and relaxed, like one in whom hope and resolution flag and fail; but Jane's deep eyes followed Lola's swift motion, and her look changed a little at the girl's air of eager joy. As she saw Lola fling herself upon his breast and cling there, she winced, and her heart yearned at the sight of a love which she had somehow failed to win with all her efforts, and which now she should never win, since Lola was about to leave her forever. The hour so long dreaded by Jane seemed surely to have come at last--the hour of her child's departure. Forth to life's best and brightest Lola would go, as was meet. Happiness illimitable awaited the girl she had cherished. It was right that this should be so; yet, alas for the vast void gray of the empty heart which Lola would leave behind! "Well, this is a kind of surprise!" said Mr. Keene, holding his daughter away for a better sight of her radiant face. "You are taller than I expected. She's got real Spanish eyes, aint she, Miss Combs? Like her mother's. The Keenes are all sandy. I'm not sure I'd have known you, Lola." "Oh, papa, you've been away so long! You've been kind and good to me--yet--" "We'll have to let bygones be bygones," declared her father, gratified to learn that she had thought him good and kind--for this point had rather worried him. "I've felt at times as if I hadn't done you just right." "Don't say so, papa!" "Well, I won't," agreed Mr. Keene, willingly. "Only I'm glad to find you haven't cherished anything against me for leaving you like I did. When I persuaded Miss Jane to take you, I couldn't foresee what hard luck I was going to strike, could I?" As he paused he caught Jane's eye upon him in a significance which he did not understand. "She doesn't know," said Jane, in a sort of whisper, indicating Lola, whose back was toward her.