After a moment something of full self-possession seemed to return to her. She smiled. But it was a smile that lacked conviction. A smile that almost broke her father's heart. "Tell me, Daddy," she pleaded. "Do you think--he'd--he'd have me be a--a bridesmaid? Would it sort of help him any?" she hurried on. "You see, I--I want him to be real happy. I want him to feel that we just love him, and that--that--we're just glad for him, and--and nothing in the world else matters--to anybody. I'm so----" There was a little catch of breath. The words she would have spoken died upon her lips. She reeled. Every vestige of color left her pretty face, and her eyes half closed. Just for one weak instant her hands groped behind her for the chair. Then, the next, Bud was at her side, and one strong arm was supporting her. "Don't, Nan!" he cried, in his heavy cumbersome way. And the sound of his deep voice alone served to ward off the encroachment of that final weakness which, in spite of all her courage, the girl was at last compelled to yield to. Bud drew her to him, and one hand smoothed her pretty brown hair with rough tenderness. For a moment her head rested against his broad bosom. Then a deep sigh came, and Nan looked up, smiling into the steady gray eyes gazing down at her, through a mist of welling tears. "My dear--dear old Daddy," she murmured, as the tears finally overflowed and slowly rolled down her cheeks. CHAPTER XIV THE KNOCKING ON THE DOOR It seemed like the hand of Destiny that Elvine van Blooren should wander across the path of Jeffrey Masters at a moment when all the fruits of his ambition seemed to be falling into his outspread-hands. It was surely the work of Fate that instant recognition of her desirability leaped in his heart, so that some six weeks later they should set out on their life's journey together on the eastward bound mail train, which bore, in its foremost van, the mails for the world outside, gathered in from every district in the region of Calthorpe. Their happiness was perfect. In six weeks' time the metamorphosis in the woman had been as complete as it was in the case of the man. For the man it seemed that life had opened out an entirely new vista. He had warmed under the influence of his new passion. The angles in his character seemed to have softened. Achievement had receded into its due proportion in his focus. The world had become peopled with warm living creatures whose strivings were now a source of sympathy to him. Life no longer moved about him detached, unappealing. So with the woman. Elvine van Blooren's past was her own. Whatever it was she hugged it to herself, and the very process of doing so had helped to harden her.