Mrs. Vincent had gone slowly towards the best parlor. She opened the door and looked in. "Shall I come to you for a minute, father?" she asked him. Since Margaret's birth she had generally called him "father"; his Christian name had never come very easily to her. "If you like," he answered, without looking up from his papers. "I thought you were worried a bit with your letter." She stood behind him and touched his shoulder. Time had accentuated the difference in years between them, and the caress had something maternal in it. "I meant to talk to you about it presently," he said, and turned reluctantly towards her. "It is from my brother in Australia." "Is he in any trouble?" "Yes, he's in trouble, I suppose." They were silent for a moment, then she spoke, and he loved her for the firmness in her voice. "If it's money, we can help him. There's a good bit saved from the farm these last years. I had no idea milk was going to pay so well." "It isn't money. He is ill, and not likely to be better." He stopped, and then went on quickly: "He made a foolish marriage before he left England; but I don't know that there is any use in our discussing that." It seemed as if he were closing an open book. "Has he no children to look after him?" "No." She was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to face something that had to be done, and nerving herself to speak. "It isn't for me to know what's best. I never knew any of your people, or saw any one belonging to you--" "That's true," he answered, awkwardly. "--Every one has a right to his own history, and I don't hold with giving it out just for the sake of talking. Many lives have been upset by things there was no need to tell--" She stopped again, and then went on bravely. "But what I am coming to is that if your brother is ill and has nobody but his wife, who isn't any good, you might like to go out to him?" "To go out to him!" The thought made his heart leap. The quiet years had ranged themselves round him lately like the walls of a prison--a friendly prison, in which he was well content--but it seemed as if he had suddenly come in sight of a door-way through which he might go outwards for a little while and come back when he had seen once more the unforgotten tracks. "It might comfort him," she went on without flinching. "And you wouldn't be more than a year gone, I expect. It must be terribly dull for you here sometimes. I've often thought how good you've been." He put his hand tenderly on her arm while he answered, "All the goodness has been yours." She turned her eyes to the window lest he should see the happiness in them, for she had always been half ashamed of loving him as she did--a staid woman of middle age, with homely matters to concern her. "I don't see that I have done anything out of the way," she said. "Did it never occur to you that you have not seen any one belonging to me, and that really you know nothing about me? I was a stranger when I came, and you took me in."