He got up from the table and went to his room.  After these words it was physically impossible for him to tell her anything more.  He had thought of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a process of suggestion.  Packing a small bag with toilet articles and other necessaries, he left it in a conspicuous place.

“I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it,” he explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again.

She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.

“Does that mean that you’re not coming home to-night?”

“I—­I don’t know.  Things may happen to—­to prevent me.”

“Where should you go?—­to New York?”

“No; not to New York.”

He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was only to say: 

“I hope you’ll try to come home, because I’m sure you’re not well.  Of course I understand it, now I know you’ve had so much to upset you.  But I wish you’d see Dr. Scott.  And, papa,” she added, rising, “don’t have me on your mind—­please don’t.  I’m quite capable of facing the world without money.  You mayn’t believe it, but I am.  I could do it—­somehow.  I’m like you.  I’ve a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of something else—­I don’t quite know what—­that has never been taxed or called on.  It may be pride, but it isn’t only pride.  Whatever it is, I’m strong enough to bear a lot of trouble.  I don’t want you to think of me at all in any way that will worry you.”

She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went away.  Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave, as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of.  For the present he himself had all he could attend to.

Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at the old house.  It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney.  Governor Rodney’s “Mansion” having been sacked in the Revolution by his fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill.  On the restoration of order the property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a continuity not customary in America, it had remained.  The present house, built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to give an impression of ample outdoor space.  Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without a certain stateliness—­rectangular, three-storied, mellow, with buff walls, buff chimneys,