“You mean that we shall be poor, very poor--that we shall have to leave Twickenham--that you will be a clerk perhaps in some office, and I a daily governess. I remember when the Gordons failed, and poor Constance Gordon and her brothers had to begin the world afresh, without money, and with very little help from their old friends. Do you think I could not bear as much as that, and be happy still, if you were with me? Ah, papa, papa, do I seem to you such a helpless, useless creature, that you shrink from trusting me at such a time as this?” Hysterical sobs rose in her throat, but she stifled them, and went on talking to him in the same quiet tender voice, and caressing him as she talked. He submitted passively enough to her caresses, but he seemed scarcely conscious of them. “Trust me, papa; tell me everything. Such troubles as these seem so much less dreadful when once they have been freely spoken of. I remember how Mr. Gordon kept everything hidden from his family as long as he could; and Constance told me that it seemed as if a great cloud was hanging over the house, and there was something in the atmosphere that stifled them all. But when the crash came at last, they bore it bravely; and see how well they have got on ever since, in a moderate way. Ah, papa, you have brought me up like a spoiled child, or a princess in a fairy tale; and now that trouble has come to us, you think I can’t bear it. But I _can_, papa; if you will only be brave, your foolish, extravagant daughter will learn to be wise and patient. I was getting very tired of Twickenham, papa; and shall be as happy as the day is long in a nice little cottage in some cheap suburb, where I can have pupils.” Lionel Hillary ought no doubt to have been comforted by his daughter’s tenderness; but unhappily there are some wounds so cruelly inflamed, that the gentlest application the surgeon can devise is apt to chafe and irritate them. The girl’s talk jarred upon the merchant’s mind, and it was with a shiver of pain that he turned to her as she left off speaking.