How much of the substance of this and previous letters Flip had confided to her father I cannot say.  If she suppressed anything it was probably that which affected Lance’s secret alone, and it was doubtful how much of that she herself knew.  In her own affairs she was frank without being communicative, and never lost her shy obstinacy even with her father.  Governing the old man as completely as she did, she appeared most embarrassed when she was most dominant; she had her own way without lifting her voice or her eyes; she seemed oppressed by mauvaise honte when she was most triumphant; she would end a discussion with a shy murmur addressed to herself, or a single gesture of self-consciousness.

The disclosure of her strange relations with an unknown man, and the exchange of presents and confidences, seemed to suddenly awake Fairley to a vague, uneasy sense of some unfulfilled duties as a parent.  The first effect of this on his weak nature was a peevish antagonism to the cause of it.  He had long, fretful monologues on the vanity of diamond-making, if accompanied with “pestering” by “interlopers;” on the wickedness of concealment and conspiracy, and their effects on charcoal-burning; on the nurturing of spies and “adders” in the family circle, and on the seditiousness of dark and mysterious councils in which a gray-haired father was left out.  It was true that a word or look from Flip generally brought these monologues to an inglorious and abrupt termination, but they were none the less lugubrious as long as they lasted.  In time they were succeeded by an affectation of contrite apology and self-depreciation.  “Don’t go out o’ the way to ask the old man,” he would say, referring to the quantity of bacon to be ordered; “it’s nat’ral a young gal should have her own advisers.”  The state of the flour-barrel would also produce a like self-abasement.  “Unless ye’re already in correspondence about more flour, ye might take the opinion o’ the first tramp ye meet ez to whether Santa Cruz Mills is a good brand, but don’t ask the old man.”  If Flip was in conversation with the butcher, Fairley would obtrusively retire with the hope “he wasn’t intrudin’ on their secrets.”

These phases of her father’s weakness were not frequent enough to excite her alarm, but she could not help noticing they were accompanied with a seriousness unusual to him.  He began to be tremulously watchful of her, returning often from work at an earlier hour, and lingering by the cabin in the morning.  He brought absurd and useless presents for her, and presented them with a nervous anxiety, poorly concealed by an assumption of careless, paternal generosity.  “Suthin’ I picked up at the Crossin’ for ye to-day,” he would say, airily, and retire to watch the effect of a pair of shoes two sizes too large, or a fur cap in September.  He would have hired a cheap parlor organ for her, but for the apparently unexpected revelation that she couldn’t play.  He had received