“My father,” said the visitor, looking down, and appearing to deliberate her phrases, “was once a distinguished financier in the City. Somewhat late in life he married, for his second wife, a lady connected with the stage. She was extremely beautiful, and I was the only pledge of their union. It has always been a grief to me to be told I took after her; for indeed, though I say it as shouldn’t, she disgraced herself as a lady by eloping with her husband’s best friend. My father never got over the blow, but retired from business and to the Continent, taking me with him who was then no more than a child of nine. We lived at Flushing, where I grew up. One day a gentleman called, and had a private interview with my father; and from that moment everything went wrong with us. He had discovered, as I know now, something umbrageous about my dear father’s transactions in the past, and, though as a fact my father had only been victimized by a sneak, he used the knowledge to get money out of him. He was a terrible man, and his name, which was like himself, was Dark. Presently he quartered himself on us, and, to cut a long story short, ended by getting my father completely under his thumb. He controlled all our expenses, ran the household as he liked, and, worst of all, compelled me, at the price of silence, to listen to his hateful addresses. Sometimes my father, in a wild effort to escape from his clutches, would flame up and defy him; but these convulsions of his were always succeeded by a state of prostration, which enabled our enemy to rivet more firmly than ever the chains in which he held us. And then at last came the crash. One day, after a terrible scene between them, my father had a stroke.” The young lady, pausing, and taking a little silken sachet from her skirt, touched her pretty cheeks with it, as if to dry from them any suggestion of emotion.