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There came a ring at the door that made my own heart jump into my mouth. I knew it was Tedham come back again, and I was still in the throes of buttoning on my collar when my wife burst into my room. I smiled round at her as gayly as I could with the collar-buttoning grimace on my face. “All right, I’ll be down in a minute. You just go and talk to him till–“

“Him?” she gasped back; and I have never been quite sure of her syntax to this day. “Them! It’s Mr. and Mrs. Hasketh, and some young lady! I saw them through the window coming up the walk.”

“Good Lord! You don’t suppose it’s Tedham’s daughter?”

“How do I know? Oh, how could you be dressing at a time like this!”

It did seem to me rather heinous, and I did not try to defend myself, even when she added, from her access of nervousness, in something like a whimper, “It seems to me you’re always dressing, Basil!”

“I’ll be right with you, my dear,” I answered, penitently; and, in fact, by the time the maid brought up the Haskeths’ cards I was ready to go down. We certainly needed each other’s support, and I do not know but we descended the stairs hand in hand, and entered the parlor leaning upon each other’s shoulders. The Haskeths, who were much more deeply concerned, were not apparently so much moved. We shook hands with them, and then Mrs. Hasketh said to us in succession, “My niece, Mrs. March; Mr. March, my niece.”

The young girl had risen, and stood veiled before us, and a sort of heart-breaking appeal expressed itself in the gentle droop of her figure, which did the whole office of her hidden face. The Haskeths were dressed, as became their years, in a composite fashion of no particular period; but I noticed at once, with the fondness I have for what is pretty in the modes, that Miss Tedham wore one of the latest costumes, and that she was not only a young girl, but a young lady, with all that belongs to the outward seeming of one of the gentlest of the kind. It struck me as the more monstrous, therefore, that she should be involved in the coil of her father’s inexpiable offence, which entangled her whether he stayed or whether he went. It was well enough that the Haskeths should still be made miserable through him; it belonged to their years and experience; they would soon end, at any rate, and it did not matter whether their remnant of life was dark or bright. But this child had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation that we feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who have died. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not to have been.

I thought that my wife, in the effusion of sympathy, would have perhaps taken the girl in her arms; but probably she knew that the dropped veil was a sign that there was to be no embracing. She put out her hand, and the girl took it with her gloved hand; but though the outward forms of their greeting were so cold, I fancied an instant understanding and kindness between them.

“My niece,” Mrs. Hasketh explained, when we were all seated, “came home this afternoon, instead of this morning, when we expected her.”

My wife said, “Oh, yes,” and after a moment, a very painful moment, in which I think we all tried to imagine something that would delay the real business, Mrs. Hasketh began again.

“Mrs. March,” she said, in a low voice, and with a curious, apologetic kind of embarrassment, “we have come–Fay wanted we should come and ask if you knew about her father–“

“Why, didn’t he come to you last night?” my wife began.