"This mood received one day a startling interruption. As I was sitting in my room with a book in my hand I felt too listless to read, the door opened, and my father stood before me. As it was weeks since he had appeared on a Sunday morning and months since he had showed himself there on a week day, I was startled, especially as his expression was more eager and impatient than I had ever seen it except when he was leaning over his laboratory table. Was his heart touched at last? Had he good news for me, or was he going to show his fatherhood once more by proffering me an invitation to go out with him in a way which my pride would allow me to accept? I rose in a state of trembling agitation, and made up my mind that if he spoke kindly I would break the hideous bonds which held me and follow him quickly into the street. "But the words which fell from his lips drove every tender impulse back into my heart. "'Have you any jewels, Hermione? I think I gave your mother some pearls when we were married. Have you them? I want them if you have.' "The revulsion of feeling was too keen. Quivering with disappointment, I cried out, bitterly: "'What to do? To give us bread? We have not had any too much of it lately.' "He stared, but did not seem to take in my words. "'Fetch the pearls,' he cried; 'I cannot afford to waste time like this; my experiments will suffer.' "'And have you no eye, no heart,' I asked, 'for the sufferings of your daughters? With no motive but an arbitrary love of power, you robbed me of my happiness. Now you want my jewels; the one treasure I have left either in the way of value, or as a remembrance of the mother who loved me.' "Of all this he heard but one word. "'Are they valuable?' he asked. 'I had hoped so, but I did not know. Get them, child, get them. The discovery upon which my fame may rest will yet be made.' "'Father, father, you want to sell them,' I screamed. 'My mother's jewels; my dead mother's jewels!' "He looked at me; this protest had succeeded in entering his ears, and his eye, which had been simply eager, became all at once dangerous. "'I do not care whose they were,' he hissed, 'so long as they are now mine. It is money I want, and money I will have, and if they will get it for me you had better be thankful. Otherwise I shall have to find some other way to raise it.' "I was cowed; he did not say what other way, but I knew by his look I had better not drive him into it, so I went to the place where I kept these sacred relics, and taking them out, laid them in his trembling, outstretched hand. "'Are these all?' he asked. And I wondered, for he had never shown the least shrewdness in any matter connected with money before. "'All but a trivial little locket which Emma wears,' said I. "'Is it worth much?' "'Scarcely five dollars,' I returned. "'Five dollars would buy the bit of platinum I want,' he muttered. But he did not ask for the locket, for I saw it on Emma's neck the next day.