"If you make good that promise, Mr. Clifford, I shall become your friend should your wooing prove successful. If you will come to the parlor I will tell Miss Hargrove that you are here." He went up the stairs slowly, feeling that he was crossing the threshold of a great change. How many thoughts passed through his mind as he took those few steps! He saw his child a little black-eyed baby in his arms; she was running before him trundling her hoop; she came to him with contracted brow and half-tearful eyes, bringing a knotty sum in fractions, and insisting petulantly that they were very "vulgar" indeed; she hung on his arm, a shy girl of fifteen, blushingly conscious of the admiring eyes that followed her; she stood before him again in her first radiant beauty as a _debutante_, and he had dreamed of the proudest alliance that the city could offer; she looked into his eyes, a pale, earnest woman, and said, "Papa, he saved my life at the risk of his own." True, true, Mr. Clifford had not spoken of that, and Mr. Hargrove had not thought of it in the interview so crowded with considerations. His heart relented toward the youth as it had not done before. Well, well, since it was inevitable, he was glad to be the one who should first bring the tidings of this bold wooer's purpose. "Trurie will never forget this moment," he mattered, as he knocked at her door, "nor my part in her little drama." O love, how it craves even the crumbs that fall from the table of its idol! "Trurie," he began, as he entered, "you had better dress. Bless me, I thought you were packing!" "I--I was." "You were expecting some one?" "Mr. Clifford said he would call--to bid me good-by, I suppose." "Was that all you supposed, Trurie?" "Indeed, papa, I told him I was going to town to-morrow, and he asked if he might call." "Did he speak of his object?" "No, papa. I'm sure it's quite natural he should call, and I have been packing." "Well, I can assure you that he has a very definite object. He has asked me if he might pay his addresses to you, and in the same breath assured me that he would in any event." "Oh, papa," she said, hiding her face on his shoulder, "he was not so unmannerly as that!" "Indeed, he went much further, declaring that he would take no refusal from you, either; or, rather, that he would take it so often as to wear out your patience, and secure you by proving that resistance was useless. He had one decided fault to find with you, also. He much regrets that you have wealth." "Oh, papa, tell me what he did say;" and he felt her heart fluttering against his side like that of a frightened bird. "Why, Trurie, men have offered you love before." "But I never loved before, nor knew what it meant," she whispered. "Please don't keep me in suspense. This is all so strange, so sacred to me."