"Very well, then," said Ellen. "I will promise you, and my father will, that you shall have your money in time, but how long do you want to wait?" "I'll wait any time. I ain't in any straits for the money, if I get it in the end," said Evarts. "You will get it in the end," said Ellen. Evarts turned to Andrew. "Look here, give me your note for six months," said he, "and we'll call it all right." "All right," said Andrew, again. "If you are not satisfied with that," said Ellen, with a tone as if she were conferring inestimable benefits, so proud it was, "you can take the watch and chain. It is not hurt in the least. Here." She was fairly insolent. Evarts regarded her with a mixture of admiration and terror. He told somebody the next day that Andrew Brewster had a stepper of a daughter, but he did not give his reasons for the statement. He had a sense of honor, and he had been in love with a girl as young before he married his wife, who had been a widow older than he, worth ten thousand dollars from her first husband. He could no more have taken the girl's watch and chain than he would have killed her. "I'm quite satisfied," he replied to her, making a repellant motion towards the watch and dangling chain glittering in the electric-light. "Very well, then," said Ellen, and she threw the chain over her neck. "You just bring that I O U to the shop to-mor-mor," said Evarts to Andrew; then, with a "Good-evening," he was off. They heard him hail an electric-car passing, and that, although he never took a car, but walked to save the fare. He had been often heard to say that he for one did not support the street railroad. After he had gone, Ellen turned to her father, and flung a silent white arm slipping from her sleeve loose around his neck, and pulled his head to her shoulder. "Now look here, father," she said, "you've been through lots to-day, and you'd better go to bed and go to sleep. I don't think mother was waked up--if she had been, she would have been out here." "Look here, Ellen, I want to tell you," Andrew began, pitifully. He was catching his breath like a child with sobs. "I don't want to hear anything," replied Ellen, firmly. "Whatever you did was right, father." "I ought to tell you, Ellen!" "You ought to tell me nothing," said Ellen. "You are all tired out, father. You can't do anything that isn't right for me. Now go to bed and go to sleep." Ellen stroked her father's thin gray hair with exactly the same tender touch with which he had so often stroked her golden locks. It was an inheritance of love reverting to its original source. She kissed him on his lined forehead with her flower-like lips, then she pushed him gently away. "Go softly, and don't wake mother," whispered she; "and, father, there's no need to trouble her with this. Good-night." Chapter XXXIV Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it was actual physical pain.