"It is cooked beautifully, honey; just right. All is. I am glad to see you come back. You don't just know what it means to me, dear, but I am afraid--" Charlotte laughed gayly. "I am not," said she. "Talk about comfort--isn't this comfort? Please _do_ eat the beefsteak, papa." Carroll began obediently to eat his supper. When he had fairly begun he realized that he was nearly famished. In spite of his stress of mind, the needs of the flesh reasserted themselves. He could not remember anything tasting so good since his boyhood. He ate his beefsteak and potatoes and toast; then Charlotte brought forward with triumph a little dish of salad, and finally a charlotte-russe. "I got these at the baker's in New Sanderson," said she. She was dimpling with delight. She looked very young, and yet the man continued to have that sense of dependence upon her. She exulted openly over her supper, her cooking, and her return. "I don't know but I was very deceitful, papa," she said, but with glee rather than compunction. "Amy and Anna had no idea that I did not mean to go with them to Aunt Catherine's, and oh, papa, what do you think I did? What do you?" "What, dear?" "My trunk was packed with, with--some old sheets and blankets and newspapers--and all my clothes are hanging in my closet up-stairs." Charlotte laughed a long ring of laughter. "I knew I was deceitful," she said again, and laughed again. Carroll did not laugh. He was thinking of the Hungarian girl in Charlotte's red dress, but Charlotte thought he was sober on account of her deceit. "Do you think it was very wrong, papa?" she asked, with sudden seriousness, eying him wistfully. "I will write and tell Amy to-night all about it. I couldn't think of any other way to do, papa." "I met Marie as I was coming home from the station this morning," Carroll said, irrelevantly. Charlotte looked at him quickly, blushed, and raised her teacup. "I thought at first, though I knew it could not be, that I saw you coming," said he; "something about her dress--"