"I don't make a practice of it, Miss Barton, but if one is in London one is tempted to do as London does. Moreover, I believe in seeing the world as it is, rather than in holding off because it is not as one wants it to be," he added, with the air of a moralist, but an obvious capacity for enjoyment lurking behind it. "The world should be made a wilderness for the evil-doer--" Hannah began, as if she were trying to remember a bit from a sermon. "There should be a voice crying in the wilderness, Miss Barton--" Mr. Garratt stopped, for it occurred to him that he might be going too far. "Or what would be the good of the wilderness?" Mr. Vincent asked. "We have finished tea, I think?" He rose and went to the best parlor. The years he had spent out of the world, as he had once known it, made him a little intolerant of many things, of this vulgar and good-tempered young man with an eye to the main chance among them. But Mr. Garratt would do well enough for Hannah--in fact, nothing could be better, for evidently he was not narrow, and this might have a good effect upon her. For himself and his daughter and for his wife there was a different plane, a different point of view. The visit to London had made him see even more clearly than before the manner of woman he had married, and for the first time, after all these years and in the autumn of their days, he was nearly being her lover. Just as if his thought had brought her to him, she put her head inside the door and asked, as she always did: "Are you busy, father, or shall I come to you for a little while?" He got up and went to her. "I wanted you," he said. "Come and sit by the window; there are a good many things to say." She felt as if heaven had flashed its joy into her heart; but only for a moment, then dread took its place. "Is the news bad from London?" she asked. "It's not good," he said. "That is one reason why I want to talk to you, dear wife." He stopped a moment before he went on. "I have told you two or three times that you know nothing about me or my people. Now, that I shall probably be going away very soon and that Margaret is grown up, I think you ought to know about them: one can never tell what may happen. There is not much to their credit to say--or to mine, I fear," he added, and then, quite briefly, he gave her the points of the family history, and made known to her the possibilities in the future. She was not elated--he had known that she would not be; but she was surprised, and a little offended. "I didn't think there was this behind," she said; "I don't know what people will say." "Is there any occasion to tell them?" "I don't suppose there is," she answered, absently, and then, with an anxious look in her clear eyes, she said the one thing that hurt him in all the years he knew her. "Father, you didn't hold it back because you didn't think us good enough?"