‘Looking better am I?’ muttered Mr. Sivewright testily. ‘Then I wonder what kind of a spectre I looked when I was worse—Ugolino in a black-velvet skull-cap, I suppose. I tried to shave myself this morning, and the face I saw in the glass was ghostly enough in all conscience. However, Lucius says I’m better, and you say I’m better; so I suppose I am better.’ ‘Lucius thinks we might all go to the country for a little while for change of air,’ said Lucille, ‘that is to say, you and I, and Lucius would be with us part of the time—just for a day or two—it’s so difficult for him to leave his patients. He says change of air would do you so much good.’ ‘Does he indeed!’ exclaimed Mr. Sivewright, with an ironical air; ‘and pray who is to take care of my collection if I leave it? It has been robbed enough as it is.’ ‘But, dear grandfather,’ remonstrated Lucille, ‘is not your health of more consequence than those things, however valuable they may be?’ ‘No, child; for to gather those things together I sacrificed all that other men call ease. Am I to lose the fruit of a lifetime? It is hard enough to be robbed of any portion of it. Let me keep what remains. I shall have no more rest till I am able to go through my catalogue, and see how much I have lost.’ ‘Could not I do that?’ ‘No, Lucille; no one knows the things properly except myself. Wincher knew a good deal, for I was weak enough to trust him fully. He knew what I paid for everything, and the value I set upon it. He was the only man I ever trusted after my son deceived me; and you see my reward. He took advantage of my helplessness to betray me.’ Lucille gave a little choking sigh. She felt that the time had come for her to speak. That poor faithful old servant must no longer appear despicable in the eyes of the master he had served so well. She must make her confession to her grandfather as she had made it to Lucius. ‘I wish Lucius were here to speak for me,’ she thought; and then, ashamed of this moral cowardice, she knelt down beside Homer Sivewright’s chair, and took his hand in hers timidly, hardly knowing how to begin. ‘I’m not angry with you, child,’ he said gently, interpreting that timid clinging touch as a remonstrance. ‘You have been true and faithful. But women are like dogs in the fidelity of their attachments. One hardly counts them when one considers the baseness of mankind.’ ‘O grandfather, I have not been quite faithful. I meant to do what was right—only—only I obeyed my heart, and wavered from the strict line of duty. It was my fault that you were robbed.’ ‘Your fault? Nonsense, child! That poor little head of yours isn’t right yet, or you would not talk so.’ ‘It is the truth, grandpapa,’ said Lucille, and then told her story—told how the wanderer had pleaded, and how, touched by his houselessness and seeming destitution, she had admitted him in secret to the shelter of his father’s roof.