A heavy footstep inside the little room relieved her of these vaguely terrible fears. The door was opened, and Mr. Hillary stood before her, very pale, very angry. “Maude! how absurd this is! What have you been doing? Why have you been sitting up?” “Because somehow I _couldn’t_ go to bed while you were working down here, papa darling. I couldn’t; I didn’t want to worry you or disobey you; but I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night. All manner of ridiculous things came into my head, and I felt that I _must_ see you before I went to sleep. Let me come in, papa.” She pleaded so prettily, looking up in her father’s face with such tender devotion beaming in her own, that Lionel Hillary must have been something harder and sterner than the stoniest of mercantile men if he had been deaf to her pleading. “Come in if you like, Maude,” he said, with a weary sigh; “I am sorry that you disturbed me. I had very nearly finished my work.” The littered mass of papers that had been scattered on Mr. Hillary’s desk when Maude had left him were gone now, and only a few neat little packets remained in their stead. But, placed conspicuously upon the desk, Maude perceived a big envelope with a great red seal, and lying near it a smaller envelope also sealed. The merchant had removed his neckcloth. He seemed to have been working hard, for big drops of moisture stood upon his forehead. A great basket near his chair was filled to overflowing with torn scraps of paper, and the shower of waste had fallen far and wide, and lay like snow about the chair in which Mr. Hillary had been sitting. “Now, Maude,” he asked sternly, as his daughter followed him into the room, “what is it that you want with me?” “Why, to see you leave your work and go to bed, papa. You don’t know how late it is.” The merchant smiled a grim smile, and pointed to his watch, which lay open on the desk. “I’ve been working against time, and I’ve kept watch upon every quarter of an hour,” he said. “But you have finished now, papa.” “Not quite. I have very nearly finished--but not quite.” Miss Hillary shook her head with a pretty petulant gesture. She was not in the least afraid of her father’s anger now. She had been so tortured by dim and shadowy apprehensions, that her spirits rebounded suddenly now that she was by her father’s side, and she was bold enough to defy him. “I shan’t leave you any more to-night, papa. If you had all the business of the Stock Exchange to transact, I wouldn’t let you sit up any longer, ruining your health by brooding over those tiresome papers. Besides, your desk is quite clear; you seem to have done everything.” “No, I have not done everything.”