When she arrived in the dining room that morning with re-enforced courage, she greeted her father and mother, both waiting her arrival, with a kiss, and sat down next to them. Several times she was on the point of bringing up the subject, but lest it should disturb her mother, she calmly awaited a more convenient time for the rehearsal she expected to have with him. Breakfast was usually a quiet affair with the Jarneys, so little was thought of the reserve with which each held speech. After breakfast, Edith took her father's arm and guided him to a quiet nook in the drawing room, and seated him in his favorite seat on one side of a long plate-glass window that opened on his private grounds in front of the mansion. "Papa, I want a word or two with you this morning before you leave," said Edith, drawing a chair up and sitting down by his side. "This is unusual, Edith; now, what can my little girl want?" he said, endearingly, taking one of her hands. "You are not going to give me a secret, are you?" "Too true, papa," replied Edith, and Mr. Jarney expected something else just then than what he heard. "I am not going to lose my little girl, I hope?" he said, patting her hand. "Not yet, papa; now, you must sit real quiet, and be not so inquisitive, nor so suspecting till you have heard me," she said, fondly. "Why, Edith, I had suspected some dark and mysterious deed you had committed; but, with your assurance that I am not to lose you yet. I am listening," he replied. Then she related all that Star had unfolded to her the night previous; and even how Monroe had acted. "From whom did Star get the information?" he asked, meditatively, after Edith had finished. "From her step-father, Peter Dieman." "Humph! Peter Dieman! and he married Kate Jarney at last--to her betterment," he said, in a ruminating mood. "Well, after all, I am satisfied. Had she heeded me, she would not have gone through all these years of misery that her profligate husband brought upon her. Once I offered to assist her; but she was too proud in her lowliness to respond to my proffered aid. It is better, perhaps; it is better. It seems that the scheme of things is wrong, sometimes; but in the end it is righted." "Now, what is to be done, dear papa?" asked Edith, seeing that he had taken a discursive course in response to her irrefutable facts. "I shall act at once," said he, gazing out the window, abstractedly, as if he had been wounded by an aspersion cast upon his magnanimity. "Ingrate! Ingrate! all of them!" he mused, drumming on the arm of the chair with his fingers, deep in study over some plan of action. "Edith, what would you do?" he asked, as he turned his head and looked at her trustfully. "I have trusted him in his department all these years, and he has given such satisfaction that no one mistrusted his motives, or questioned his integrity. I can hardly believe it, Edith. What would you do?"