Vincent Carew had been a singularly handsome and imposing gentleman, and the fine artist had done full justice to his noble subject. The dark eyes seemed to hold the very fire of life and the smiling lips almost about to breathe a blessing on his wronged, unhappy orphan child. As Kathleen paused in front of the magnificent portrait of her lost father, the hard, defiant look on her face faded as if by magic, and the burning light of her large Oriental dark eyes was softened by a rush of tears. Almost unconsciously she sunk upon her knees and lifted her clasped white hands appealingly. "Oh, father, dear father, if only you could speak to me, if only you could tell me why you turned against your unhappy child?" she sighed, pathetically. It was a sorrowful picture--pathetic enough to move anything but the heart of a fiend--that unhappy girl kneeling there in tears and love before the portrait of the father who had disinherited her and left her to want and misery. But no one noticed her. Mrs. Carew and her daughter were busy over Ivan, whose swoon was a deep one. Kathleen's raining tears fell unnoticed and unpitied, save by the great All-seeing Eye. Kathleen's heart was thrilling with all the pathos expressed in Cowper's beautiful lines: "Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last!" Alas! how cruel it was to think that this dear, loving father had turned against her at the last! What was the mystery of it? Who was to blame? "Not you, papa darling!" moaned the girl, loyal to her love for him despite everything. "Some one deceived you, lied to you, made you believe me unworthy of your love. I will not lay it up against you. I forgive you, dear, because you were always so good and loving!" her voice broke in a hard sob, ending with, "But, oh, papa, papa, I wish you could come back from the grave as I did, to comfort your poor girl! Dear Lord, I pray Thee send papa back to me!" Had Heaven answered her earnest prayer? She turned wildly toward the door, for a strange voice had sounded from it--strange, yet not strange, for it had a tone of her father's voice in it, although louder and less refined than Vincent Carew's polished tones. A stranger had entered the library--a tall old man in shabby genteel clothes that had seen much service, and wearing a long gray beard that matched his bushy gray curls. A pair of smoky glasses hid a pair of dark eyes that twinkled with curiosity as he advanced, exclaiming: "Hey-day, good friends! what's the matter with the pretty young man? Sick?" Ivan Belmont had at that moment opened his light-blue eyes on the faces of his mother and sister, and they turned languidly on the new-comer, while Mrs. Carew exclaimed, almost ferociously, her eyes gleaming like blue steel: "Who are you, and what is the meaning of this intrusion?"