The table was spread for breakfast in the dining-parlor; but already a few things were away, an old-fashioned cabinet which had been my mother's and the little book-case where were all the books in their faded pretty bindings which had been given to her when she was a young lady and a bride--these were mine, and had always been called mine, and the wall looked very blank where they had stood; and my chair, with the embroidered cover of my mother's own working; I missed it whenever I came into the room. There were other things gone too, everything which was my father's own, and did not belong to Cottiswoode, and everybody knows how desolate a room looks which has nothing but the barely necessary furniture--the table and the chairs. To make it a little less miserable, a fire had been lighted; but it was only raw, and half kindled, and, I think, if possible, made this bare room look even less like home. My tears almost choked me when I came into it; but I was very haughty and proud in my downfall and _would_ not cry, though I longed to do it. My father was still in the library, and I went to seek him there. He was sitting by his own table doing nothing, though he had writing materials by him, and a book at his hand. He was leaning his head upon both his hands, and looking full before him into the vacant air, with the fixed gaze of thought--I saw, that from his still and composed countenance, his proud will had banished every trace of emotion--yet I saw, nevertheless, how underneath this calm exterior, his heart was running over with the troubles and remembrances of his subdued and passionate life. For I knew my father was passionate in everything, despite his habitual restraint and quietness--passionate in his few deep-seated and unchanging loves--and passionate in the strong, but always suppressed resentment which he kept under as a Christian, but never subdued as a man. I stood back as I looked, in reverence for the suffering it must have cost him to retrace, as I saw he was doing, all his life at Cottiswoode; but he heard the rustle of my dress, and, starting with an impatient exclamation, called me to him. "Breakfast, papa," said I, hesitating, and with humility--a strange smile broke on his face. "Surely, Hester, let us go to breakfast," he said, rising slowly as if his very movements required deliberation to preserve their poise and balance--and then he took me by the hand, as he had done when I was a child, and we went from the one room to the other, and sat down at a corner of the long dining-table--for our pleasant round table at which we usually breakfasted, had, like the other things, been taken away.