"You had a letter this morning, Frances--from Spens, was it not?" "Oh, yes; I had forgotten; your creditors will accept my terms for the present. I must drive over to Arden this afternoon, and arrange what day I go there." "I shall miss you considerably, Frances. It's a great pity you couldn't arrange to come home to sleep; you might see to my comforts then by rising a little earlier in the morning. I wish, my dear, you would propose it to Mrs. Carnegie; if she is a woman of any consideration she will see how impossible it is that I should be left altogether." "I can not do that, father. Even you must pay a certain price for a certain good thing. You do not wish to leave the Firs, but you can not keep both the Firs and me. I will come and see you constantly, but my time from this out belongs absolutely to Mrs. Carnegie. She gives me an unusually large salary, and, being her servant, I must endeavor in all particulars to please her, and must devote my time to her to a certain extent day and night." "Good gracious, Frances, I do hope that though adversity has come to the house of Kane, you are not going so far to forget yourself as to stoop to menial work at Arden. Why, rather than that--rather than that, it would be better for us to give up the home of our fathers." "No work need be menial, done in the right spirit," responded Frances. Her eyes wandered away, far up among the trees, where Arnold still slowly paced up and down. In the cause of pride her father might even be induced to give up the Firs. Was love, then, to weigh nothing in the scale? She turned suddenly to the father. "You must rest now," she said. "You need not be the least anxious on your own account any more. You must rest and take things quietly, and do your best not to get ill. It would be very bad for you to be ill now, for there would be no one to nurse you. Remember that, and be careful. Now go and sit in the parlor and keep out of draughts. I can not read to you this morning, for I shall be very busy, and you must not call me nor send for me unless it is absolutely necessary. Now, good-bye for the present." Frances did not, as her usual custom was, establish her father in his easy-chair; she did not cut his morning paper for him, nor attend to the one or two little comforts which he considered essential; she left him without kissing him, only her full, grave, sorrowful eyes rested for one moment with a look of great pathos on his wrinkled, discontented old face, then she went away. The squire was alone; even the irritating strain of "Sweethearts" no longer annoyed him. Fluff had ceased to play--Fluff's gay little figure was no longer visible; the man who had paced up and down under the distant trees had disappeared; Frances's gray dress was nowhere to be seen.