If this letter ever reaches you I shall be dead. The heart attacks have been worse of late and it may be I shall go off suddenly. If I do, I want to get word to you which if I live it will not be necessary for you to read. I have not been a good father and I deserve nothing at your hands. The worst mistake of all those that I have made was marrying the woman who has shirked mothering you; and after I am gone I know you have nothing to expect from her. I am financially involved with Rufus Carder to an extent that gives me constant anxiety. He has happened to see you and taken a violent fancy to you, and this fact has made him withdraw the pressure that has made my nights miserable. He has been trying to persuade me to let you come out here. He knows that his cousin Juliet is not attached to you, and, since seeing me in one of my attacks of pain, he is constantly reminding me how precarious is my life and that if he had a daughter like you she should have every advantage money could buy. He is a rough specimen with a miserly reputation. I won't go into the occasions of weakness and need which have resulted in his power over me. Suffice it to say that he may bring cruel pressure to bear on you, and I want to warn you solemnly not to let any consideration of me or what people may say of me influence your actions. You are young and beautiful, and I pray that the rest of your life may have in it more happiness than your childhood has known. I have interceded with Carder for Pete several times, winning the poor fellow's devotion. He can't read writing and will not be tempted to open this. I'm sure he will hide it and manage to give it to you secretly if you come to this dreary place. My poor child! My selfishness all rises before me and the punishment is fearful. If there is a God, may He bless you and guard you, my innocent little girl. Your unworthy FATHER Geraldine's hungry heart drank in the tender message. Again and again she kissed the letter while tears of grief ran down her cheeks. A tiny hope sprang in her breast. She read her father's words over and over, striving to glean from them a contradiction of the accusation that he had planned and carried out a deliberate crime. Rufus Carder had promised her father to treat her as a daughter. How that assertion soothed the wound to her filial affection, and warmed her heart with the assurance that her father had not sold her into the worst slavery! She soon crept into bed, but not to sleep. Her father's exhortation seemed to give her permission to speculate on those words of the stranger knight: "Courage. Walk in meadow. Wear white." CHAPTER VIII The Meadow