“Dear daughter, I confess that I am old; Age is unnecessary; on my knees I beg That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.” These words addressed by the hapless Lear to his unnatural daughter Regan I take from their context and utter to one who has ever been a Cordelia. To that most wretched of earth’s creatures Her Father. Nancy was not deluded by the laboured rhetoric of this letter. She understood that her father’s need was serious. She had the money that would relieve him. She must send it immediately. To be sure he had failed her four years ago, but had she not allowed her bitterness to make her unnatural? Was she not to blame a little for this disastrous later phase of his career? Oh, yes, more than a little. Moreover, that money in the bank, since her break with Kenrick, had never lain there comfortably. It had never seemed to belong to her as genuinely as once it did. The sum her father required so gravely was more than Kenrick could have spent on that Italian adventure of hers. She took out her cheque-book and sat down at the table. Or should she go and see him in Camberwell? She read her father’s letter again. No, it was clear he did not want her to be a spectator of his wretchedness. But at least she could invite him to her rooms—yet could she? That would mean talking about Letizia, and perhaps he would want to see her. Was it very heartless of her not to want him to see Letizia? After all, he had not suggested visiting her. She would send him this money and she could decide later what she should do. Nancy received a long and emotional letter of thanks, in which her father said that he was feeling very low, but that without doubt her rescue of him from the desperate position in which he had been plunged would rapidly restore him to health. Meanwhile, he begged her again not to dream of visiting him in Camberwell. When the warm weather began in May he would come and see his beloved daughter. But when the warm weather came in May, Nancy read an obituary in _The Era_ of that ripe old actor, Michael O’Finn, a fine comedian and a tragic actor of no mean ability. CHAPTER XXIV DECENNIAL