“Ill?” gurgled Mrs. Tebbitt breathlessly. “It’s an illness a lot of people would like to die of. He’s been on the drink for the last month. That’s what he’s been. He’s drunk now, and in another hour or so he’ll be blind drunk, because he’s just sent out for another bottle of brandy. If you say you’re his daughter and insist on seeing him, well, I suppose you’ll have to, but his room’s in a disgusting state and which is not my fault, for the last time the girl went up to give it a rout out he threw the dustpan out of the window and it hit a organist who was walking past—I know it was a organist, because he give me his card and said he’d lodge a complaint with the police, but we haven’t heard nothing more since, but I’ve forbid the girl to touch his room again till he’s sober, and which he won’t be to-day, that’s certain.” Nancy’s heart was hardened against her father. In her present straits she could not feel that there was any kind of an excuse for behaviour like his. “Thank you,” she said coldly to the landlady. “Perhaps when he can understand what you’re telling him you’ll be kind enough to say that Miss O’Finn called to see him, but would not come up.” She turned away from the house in a cold rage. In her bitterness she was tempted for a moment to accept the Kinos’ offer to adopt Letizia and take her away with them on their tour. The worthlessness of her own father was extended in her thoughts to include all parents including herself. It would be better to abandon Letizia lest one day she might fail her as to-day her father had failed herself. Then she saw Bram’s whimsical face looking at her from the silver frame on her dressing-table, and she felt ashamed. She wondered again about that last unspoken wish of his. She had put out of her mind the idea of appealing to his brother to help in the guardianship of Letizia. But perhaps Bram had been really anxious that Letizia should heal the breach between them. Perhaps that had been his unspoken wish. He might have felt that she would be unwilling to ask a favour from his brother, and even with his dying breath have abstained from saying anything that she could construe into the solemnity of a last request, in case she should not like the idea of begging a favour from his relations. That would be Bram’s way. Just a diffident hint, but nothing that could involve her too deeply.