“I don’t suppose,” she faltered, “you’d be willing to be told. But mother and me have done for him so long--he ain’t well, the minister ain’t--there’s ways he likes his tea made, and we het the bricks, come cold weather, for him--and--all those little things. We’ve tried to take good care of Mr. Bayard! It’s been a good many years!” said Jane piteously. It was more dreadful to her to give up boarding the minister, than it was that he should marry the summer lady in the gold and purple gowns. “I suppose you and he will go somewhere?” she added bitterly. “We shan’t forget you, Jane,” said Helen gently. The calico blouse shoulder shook off the delicate hand that rested upon it. “I won’t come in,” she said. “I’ll go right home.” Jane turned away, and walked across the cliffs. The hotel lights fell short of her, and the darkness swallowed her undersized, pathetic figure, as the mystery of life draws down the weak, the uncomely, and the unloved. Jane went home, and unlocked her bureau drawer. From beneath the sachet-bag, on which her little pile of six handkerchiefs rested precisely, she drew out an old copy of Coleridge. The book was scented with the sachet, and had a sickly perfume; it was incense to Jane. She turned the leaves to find “Alph, the sacred river;” then shut the book, and put it back in the bureau drawer. She did not touch it with her lips or cheek. She handled it more tenderly than she did her Bible. * * * * * Left to herself, Helen felt the full force of the situation fall upon her, in a turmoil of fear and perplexity. The whole thing was so foreign to her nature and to the experience of her protected life, that it seemed to her more than incredible. There were moments when she was in danger of underrating the facts, and letting the chances take their course--it seemed to her so impossible that Jane and Lena should not, somehow, be mistaken. Her mind was in a whirlwind of doubt and dismay. With a certain coolness in emergencies characteristic of her, she tried to think the position out, by herself. This futile process occupied perhaps a couple of hours. It was between eleven and twelve o’clock when the Professor, with a start, laid down his manuscript upon the Revised Version. For the door of the clam study had opened quietly, and revealed his daughter’s agitated face. “Papa,” she said, “I am in a great trouble. I have come to you first--to know what to do--before I go to him. I’ve been thinking,” she added,“that perhaps this is one of the things that fathers are _for_.” Like a little girl she dropped at his knee, and told him the whole story. “I couldn’t go to a man, and ask him to marry me, without letting you know, Papa!” said the Professor’s daughter.