“Have you just come back? Why didn’t you let me know, daddy?” she demanded imperiously. “Or were you busy?”--with a careless glance at the newly written note that was to mean so much for her. He nodded. “Finished now? Tell me, chickabiddy, how did you get on without me?” He could not keep from passing a hand that shook a little over the dear waves of her red-gold hair. She faced him suddenly. “You’re tired, daddy; you look pale. We’ll have dinner early.” “Whenever you like.” He was looking at her as a man looks at the dearest thing on earth; how fair, how heavenly fair she was as she stood, tall and slim, in her white frock, the last sunset light catching her golden hair; falling on her great dark-gray eyes, which were all but black, or sometimes violet, as her mood varied; making lovely her faintly pink cheek, her rose-red mouth. It was as though Cristiane Luoff had come back from the dead, in the crown of her youth. “Oh, you are tired!” the girl cried, as she met his gaze. “You--you look quite plain, daddy! I’ll ring for dinner now.” Somehow Gaspard le Marchant found strength to laugh at that time-worn joke about his plainness, but the next instant his hard-held composure was nearly out of hand. “You’ll never go away and leave me again, will you, daddy? I do miss you so horribly.” “I--I won’t, if I can help it,” said Sir Gaspard, almost sharply. CHAPTER VI. A DREAM OF SAFETY. “Mother, aren’t you awake?” Ismay, wrapped in an old flannel dressing-gown, stood knocking sharply at Mrs. Trelane’s bedroom door, her knuckles blue with cold and her face set peevishly. “Mother,” she repeated, “there isn’t any milk, and the milkman won’t leave us any unless we pay for it. Haven’t you any money?”--running her fingers impatiently over the bedroom door. It opened quietly as she drummed on it. Mrs. Trelane, dressed for the day and exquisitely neat, stood looking at her. “What’s the matter, what do you want?” she asked angrily. Her face was drawn from a night of waking, and haggard as a gambler’s who has flung down his last card and does not know what remains in his opponent’s hand. “Money? You know I haven’t any. Can’t you do without milk?” “I suppose I must”--sullenly. “Breakfast’s ready, then--dry bread and tea without milk! What made you sleep so late? It’s nearly eleven.” “What was the good of waking?” Not even to Ismay could she say that she had never slept the livelong night for waiting for the day and the postman’s knock; that when it came she had run to the door to find only the big blue envelope she had dreaded, and not a word from the man to whom she had turned in her despair. Ever since she had sat old and haggard in the morning light, her busy brain thinking, to no end. Unless Gaspard le Marchant answered that letter destruction looked her in the face.