"I'm not crying, Dad," she said. "There's nothing to cry for," and she fondled his hand in her own--"The doctors are wrong. You're only a little weak and run down--you'll be all right with rest and care--and--and you shan't die! You shan't die! I won't let you." He drew a long breath and passed his hand across his forehead as though he were puzzled or in pain. "That's foolish talk," he said, with some harshness; "You've got trouble to meet, and you must meet it. I'm bound to show you trouble--but I can show you a way out of it as well." He paused a moment,--a light wind outside the lattice swayed a branch of roses to and fro, shaking out their perfume as from a swung censer. "The first thing I must tell you," he went on, "is about yourself. It's time you should know who you are." She looked up at him startled. "Who I am?" she repeated,--then as she saw the stern expression on his face a sudden sense of fear ran through her nerves like the chill of an icy wind and she waited dumbly for his next word. He gripped her hand hard in his own. "Now hear me out, child!" he said--"Let me speak on without interruption, or I shall never get through the tale. Perhaps I ought to have told you before, but I've put it off and put it off, thinking 'twould be time enough when you and Robin were wed. You and Robin--you and Robin!--your marriage bells have rung through my brain many and many a night for the past two years and never a bit nearer are you to the end of your wooing, such fanciful children as you both are! And you're so long about it and I've so short a time before me that I've made up my mind it's best to let you have all the truth about yourself before anything happens to me. All the truth about yourself--as far as I know it." He paused again. She was perfectly silent. She trembled a little--wondering what she was going to hear. It must be something dreadful, she thought,--something for which she was unprepared,--something that might, perhaps, like a sudden change in the currents of the air, create darkness where there had been sunshine, storm instead of calm. His grip on her hand was strong enough to hurt her, but she was not conscious of it. She only wished he would tell her the worst at once and quickly. The worst,--for she instinctively felt there was no best.