“Oh, no, papa--perhaps just a little nervous. Go on, papa, have you anything more to tell?” “Not just now, my dear daughter--not till you take your luncheon. No? A drop of this wine, perhaps, to set you up. There, the color is coming back to your cheeks. Shall I ring to have the things taken away?” She nodded, and they adjourned to their private parlor. Then Alston Mead said, gently: “My dear daughter, I have been hearing surprising things about you to-day. While I have been wondering at your indifference to men, it seems you already had a lover.” Her cheeks paled, then flamed. “Who has dared betray that unhappy episode of my past? Who has called his despicable name?” she half-sobbed. Alston Mead put his arm about her tenderly, like a woman, with a soothing caress. “Gently, dear; perhaps he does not deserve your scorn,” he said. “Then you do not know all the story, papa.” “Perhaps I know it better than you do, my darling girl, and, strange to say, Chester Olyphant has been known to me for years. His father and mother were dear friends of mine, and I knew their boy when he was a little curly-headed chap in kilts. Naturally, I lost sight of him afterward in my exile.” Leola cried, bitterly: “You lost sight of him, so you did not know he grew up to be an unworthy scion of a good family--a heartless trifler with women’s hearts.” “Grave charges, my daughter!” “You said that you knew all, dear papa.” “Yes, I have heard both sides of the story, and you know only one, Leola.” “Papa!” “You know only one,” he repeated. Leola cried, passionately: “That was all there was to know! And I am sorry, I am indignant, that my friends, in mistaken kindness, have betrayed this to you. I--I--was forgetting it in this new life with you--only it came back bitterly this morning when Jessie told me--that--she--will be married to him--in July!” “And you, Leola, did you hear that news without a pang? Has your heart grown callous?” “Spare me, papa!” and the golden head was buried on his breast, while heaving sobs shook his daughter’s form from head to feet--sobs that seemed to burst her very heart in twain. Had her heart grown callous? Oh, no, the pity of it, that she could not deny she had given her love, irrevocably, to another woman’s lover--to one unworthy her lightest thought. “A honeyed heart for the honeycomb, And the humming bee flies home. “A heavy heart in the honey-flower, And the bee has had his hour.” Alston Mead let her head rest in his arms until the storm of tears spent itself naturally; then, as she began to grow calmer, he exclaimed, angrily: “Curses on the woman whose malice has culminated in this past year of sorrow; whose memory must always darken your life, even when the shadow shall be removed.” “Removed, papa? Alas, alas!” moaned the girl, who could see in the future no surcease of sorrow. She started when her father laughed aloud: