She did not answer, but continued staring at the letter. I went up to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling very uncomfortable. She took no notice of me, beginning to murmur: “Poor Frank—Poor Frank.” That was my father’s name. “But what is it mother?—tell me what’s the matter!” She turned and looked at me as if I were a stranger; she got up, and began to walk about the room; then she left the room, and I heard her go out of the house. The letter had fallen on to the floor. I picked it up. The handwriting was very broken. The address gave a village some few miles away; the date was three days before. “My Dear Lettice: “You will want to know I am gone. I can hardly last a day or two—my kidneys are nearly gone. “I came over one day. I didn’t see you, but I saw the girl by the window, and I had a few words with the lad. He never knew, and he felt nothing. I think the girl might have done. If you knew how awfully lonely I am, Lettice—how awfully I have been, you might feel sorry. “I have saved what I could, to pay you back. I have had the worst of it Lettice, and I’m glad the end has come. I have had the worst of it. “Good-bye—for ever—your husband, “FRANK BEARDSALL.” I was numbed by this letter of my father’s. With almost agonised effort I strove to recall him, but I knew that my image of a tall, handsome, dark man with pale grey eyes was made up from my mother’s few words, and from a portrait I had once seen. The marriage had been unhappy. My father was of frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm. He was a liar, without notion of honesty, and he had deceived my mother thoroughly. One after another she discovered his mean dishonesties and deceits, and her soul revolted from him, and because the illusion of him had broken into a thousand vulgar fragments, she turned away with the scorn of a woman who finds her romance has been a trumpery tale. When he left her for other pleasures—Lettie being a baby of three years, while I was five—she rejoiced bitterly. She had heard of him indirectly—and of him nothing good, although he prospered—but he had never come to see her or written to her in all the eighteen years. In a while my mother came in. She sat down, pleating up the hem of her black apron, and smoothing it out again. “You know,” she said, “he had a right to the children, and I’ve kept them all the time.” “He could have come,” said I. “I set them against him, I have kept them from him, and he wanted them. I ought to be by him now—I ought to have taken you to him long ago.” “But how could you, when you knew nothing of him?” “He would have come—he wanted to come—I have felt it for years. But I kept him away. I know I have kept him away. I have felt it, and he has. Poor Frank—he’ll see his mistakes now. He would not have been as cruel as I have been——” “Nay, mother, it is only the shock that makes you say so.”