"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, and how well you look in it!" "It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much from her, but I only wound her by a refusal." "Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene--"and I am especially pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a gentleman by-and-by." "A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and lonely." "Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter." Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her father's even at this eleventh hour. "_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too late by an erring creature like me?" After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's chair and kissed him.