“Your daughter is an excellent actress,” she said, looking back over her shoulder as she moved towards the door. “I have no doubt but that the art is inherited. We shall see!” Obeying my father’s gesture, I rang the bell. We heard the front door open and close after her. Then I threw my arms around his neck in a passionate abandonment of grief. “It is all my fault,” I sobbed--”my fault! But for me she would have forgiven.” My father smiled a faint, absent smile. He was smoothing my hair gently with one hand and gazing steadfastly into the fire. His face was serene, almost happy. Yet the blow had fallen. CHAPTER XXX THE MASTER OF COLVILLE HALL I believe that I took off my clothes and made some pretence of going to bed, but in my memory those long hours between the time when I left father in the study and the dawn seems like one interminable nightmare. Yet towards morning I must have slept, for my room was full of sunlight when a soft knocking at the door awakened me. Our trim little housemaid entered with a note; the address was in my father’s handwriting. I sat up in bed and tore open the envelope eagerly. Something seemed to tell me even before I glanced at its contents that the thing I dreaded was coming to pass. This is what I read: “Forgive me, child, if I have left you with only a written farewell. The little strength I have left I have need of, and I shrank from seeing you again lest the sorrow of it should sap my purpose; should make me weak when I need to be strong. The girl will tell her story, and at the best my career of usefulness here is over; so I leave Eastminster this morning forever. I have written to Alice and to the Bishop. To him I have sent a brief memoir of my life. I do not think that he will be a stern judge, especially as the culprit stands already with one foot in the grave.