When Sarah, in answer to her father's summons, came down to breakfast in the front kitchen, it was easy to see that she also had slept little. Her eyes were swollen and red, and she could not eat anything. A cup of hot tea she swallowed, and that was all. Her father spoke to her in the old familiar Warwickshire dialect, and urged her to "eat summat, as she had a long day's journey afoore her," but Sally could not, and to all he spoke answered only in monosyllables. Not until he began to talk directly of going "home" did she wake to anything like animation. The very sound of the word made her weep, and her father led her away to his own room to reason with her. "Oh, don't ask me to go back," she cried; "I cannot, I cannot; I'm fit only to die." But her father soothed her, talked to her of her lonely mother watching for her coming, praying to see her child's face again before she died; and when that did not move her, he bade her think of her little babe she had left last year. "How could ye like her to grow up a-lookin' for a mother, Sally, lass, an' not findin' one?" That seemed to touch her more than all his assurances that no one would ever reproach her or cry shame upon her in her own father's house. Still she yielded not, but cried out that she was lost to them all, to every good in this world. "You might not blame me openly," she said, "but I would have the feelin' in my heart all the time that I was a shame an' disgrace to you, and that pity alone kept you from telling me so. No, no, no, I will not go back to Ashbrook." "Look here, then, Sally," said her father at last, "if you wonnot go back, I'll stay by you. My mind's made up. I'll never lose sight of ye again, not while I'm alive; and if you wonnot go home wi' me, I must bide wi' you. There is no other way. It will kill your mother, and it will kill me, an' leave your child an outcast orphan, but ye are determined, an' it must e'en be so." This staggered her, but still she yielded not, thinking, doubtless, that her father meant not what he said, till at last, in despair, he told her the story of Adelaide Codling. He spoke of her despairing looks, her rapid descent from wild gaiety to death, of her last farewell to this world, of her lonely grave, and her poor, old, broken-hearted father, and wound up by asking--"Will you face an end like that, Sally? Dare you do it, my child? When I saw her jump on the bridge I thought it was you," he added, with a look that went straight to his daughter's heart. The story had at first been listened to in dogged silence. Then the girl's tears began to flow, at first silently, at last with convulsive sobs. Her father held out his hand as he ceased speaking, and she, moved so deeply as to be lifted out of herself, laid both her hands in his, and said--