"No--only to you--I thought you said I must tell you everything. But, of course, if you don't wish me to--I won't." Mr. Leigh laughed and took her on his knee. He was not quite sure whether she was serious or was only laughing at him, but, as he began to explain, she burst into a peal of merriment over her victory. In appearance she was like her mother, only he thought her fairer--as fair as he had thought her mother in the days of his first devotion; and her deeper eyes and firmer features were an added beauty; the well-rounded chin was his own. Her eyes, deep with unfathomable depths, and mouth, firm even with its delicate beauty, had come from some ancestor or ancestress who, in some generation past, had faced life in its most exacting form with undaunted resolution and, haply, had faced death with equal calm for some belief that now would scarcely have given an hour's questioning. So, when she grew each year, developing new powers and charm and constancy, he began to find a new interest in life, and to make her more his companion and confidante than he had ever made her mother. He left his business oftener to see her than he had left it to see her mother; he took her oftener with him on his trips, and took more trips, that he might have her company. She sat at the head of his table, and filled her place with an ability that was at once his astonishment and his pride. At one time, as she changed from a mere child to a young girl, he had thought of marrying again, rather with a view to giving her a guide and counsellor than for any other purpose. Her storminess, however, at the mere suggestion, and much more, her real grief, had led him to defer the plan from time to time, until now she was a young lady, and he could see for himself that she needed neither chaperon nor counsellor. He sometimes smiled to think what the consequences would have been had he taken to wife the soft, kindly, rather commonplace lady whom he had once thought of as his daughter's guardian. A domestic fowl in the clutches of a young eagle would have had an easier time.