“I have seen girls--well-bred, good-looking girls, trudging in the muddy London streets, with music portfolios in their arms, while I have been out shopping in my carriage,” she thought. “Oh, if I could only be like one of these, and work for papa, and see him happy, smiling at me across our little table, as I gave him his dinner, and not brooding as he does now, hour after hour, hour after hour, in this grand drawing-room, with the same settled look of trouble on his face!” It was not only of late that Maude had watched her father anxiously and sadly. Very often during the year just passed, and even in the year preceding that, the girl had been alarmed by Lionel Hillary’s moody looks and long gloomy reveries, out of which it was his wont to rouse himself in a mechanical kind of way when strangers were present. But the merchant always gave the same explanation of his sombre looks. Those headaches, those constitutional headaches, which came upon him constantly through the fatigue and worry of business--those terrible headaches made an excuse for everything, and Maude’s fears about her father related solely to his health. How should she understand the dismal diagnosis of commercial disease? How should she imagine that there was any limit to the fairy purse of Fortunatus--any chance of a blight in Aladdin’s orchard of jewelled fruits? The second dinner-bell rang, and there was no sign of the merchant’s return. It had been a common thing lately for Lionel Hillary to keep his cook in a fever of vexation over the hot plates and furnaces where the viands for the diurnal banquet simmered and frizzled in their copper receptacles. Maude felt no special alarm about her father. Why should he hurry home to lengthen the long evening of brooding thought and care? Why should she wish him home, when, out of all the depth of her love and devotion, she could not conjure one word of comfort wherewith to greet him? She was thinking this when the door was opened suddenly by an eager hand, and Mr. Hillary came into the room. His daughter rose from the sofa, startled by the suddenness of his entrance. It is a small action, that of opening a door, and entering a room; but there was as great a change in Mr. Hillary’s performance of it, as if twenty years had suddenly been lifted from his life. “My darling!” he cried, taking his daughter in his arms, “it is you whom I have to thank. It was your doing, was it not?” “What, papa?” “The money--the twenty thousand pounds.” “Twenty thousand pounds!” She thought the burning pain in her head had engendered some sudden delirium. She could not believe that this was her father’s face, lighted by a hopeful smile, such as she had not seen upon it during the last three years. “What twenty thousand pounds, papa?”