The sight brought to her a new outburst of sobbing, for her sorrow now had dignity and solemnity from thebowed white head of her old father, and she felt that her heart was dying amid the pomp of the church. It was the last rites being performed at the death-bed. Into her ears came some imagining of the low melan. choly chant of monks in a gloom. Finally her father arose. He kissed her on the brow. " Try to sleep, dear," he said. He turned out the gas and left the room. His thought was full of chastened emotion. But if his thought was full of chastened emotion, it received some degree of shock when he arrived in the presence of Mrs. Wainwright. " Well, what is all this about ? " she demanded, irascibly. " Do you mean to say that Marjory is breaking her heart over that man Coleman ? It is all your fault-" She was apparently still ruffled over her exclusion. When the professor interrupted her he did not speak with his accustomed spirit, but from something novel in his manner she recognised a danger signal. " Please do not burst out at it in that way." "Then it Is true?" she asked. Her voice was a mere awed whisper. " It is true," answered the professor. "Well," she said, after reflection, "I knew it. I alway's knew it. If you hadn't been so blind! You turned like a weather-cock in your opinions of Coleman. You never could keep your opinion about him for more than an hour. Nobody could imagine what you might think next. And now you see the result of it! I warned you! I told you what this Coleman was, and if Marjory is suffering now, you have only yourself to blame for it. I warned you! " " If it is my fault," said the professor, drearily, " I hope God may forgive me, for here is a great wrong to my daughter." Well, if you had done as I told you-" she began. Here the professor revolted. " Oh, now, do not be- gin on that," he snarled, peevishly. Do not begin on that." " Anyhow," said Mrs. Wainwright, it is time that we should be going down to dinner. Is Marjory com- ing? " " No, she is not," answered the professor, " and I do not know as I shall go myself." " But you must go. Think how it would look! All the students down there dining without us, and cutting up capers! You must come." " Yes," he said, dubiously, " but who will look after Marjory ? " " She wants to be left alone," announced Mrs. Wainwright, as if she was the particular herald of this news. " She wants to be left alone." " Well, I suppose we may as well go down." Before they went, the professor tiptoed into his daughter's room. In the darkness he could only see her waxen face on the pillow, and her two eyes gazing fixedly at the ceiling. He did not speak, but immedi. ately withdrew, closing the door noiselessly behind him. I CHAPTER XXVI.