“Is there any thing you’d like to do, papa dear?” asked she, laying her forefinger caressingly upon his bald head.  “Because if there isn’t, I, I should like—­I think I’d better go to Sophie.”

Professor Valeyon nodded his head, being in truth desirous of taking solitary counsel with himself.  The letter contained a good deal more than the invitation he had communicated to Cornelia, and he could not feel at ease until he had more thoroughly analyzed and digested it.  So when his daughter had vanished through the door, with a smile and a kiss of the hand, he mounted his spectacles again, and spread the letter open on his knee.

After reading a while in silence, he spoke; though his voice was audible only to his own mental ears.

“There was a time,” said he, “when I wouldn’t have believed I could ever hear the news of that man’s death, and take it so quietly!  And now he sends me his son!—­as it were bequeaths him to me.  Can it be as a hostage for forgiveness, though so late? or is it merely because he knew I could not but feel a vital interest in the boy, and would instruct and treat him as my own?  He was a shrewd judge of human nature—­and yet, I must not judge him harshly now.”

Here Professor Valeyon happened again to catch sight of his slipper, and interrupted his soliloquy to extend his stockinged toe, fork it toward himself, and having, with some trouble, got it right side uppermost, to put it on.  And then he referred once more to the letter.

“I should like to know whether he was aware that Abbie was here, or that she was alive at all!  Margaret says nothing about it in her letter.  If he did, of course he must have written to her, or, if he was determined to die as for these last twenty years and more he has lived, he would never knowingly have sent the boy where she was, on any consideration.  Well, well, I can easily find out how that is, from either Abbie or the boy.  By-the-way, I wonder whether this incognito of his may have any thing to do with it?  Hum!  Margaret says it’s only so that he may not be interrupted in his studies by acquaintances.  Well, that’s likely enough—­that’s likely enough!”

“By-the-way, where’s the young man to stay?  At Abbie’s, of course, if—­Margaret says, at some good boarding-house.  Well, Abbie’s is the only one in town.  It’s a singular coincidence, certainly, if it is a coincidence!  Perhaps I’d better go down at once and see Abbie, and have the whole matter cleared up.  I shall have time enough before supper, if I harness Dolly now.”

As Professor Valeyon arrived at this conclusion, he uplifted himself, with some slight signs of the rustiness of age, from his chair, took his brown-linen duster from the balcony railing across which it had been thrown, and put it on, with laborious puffings, and a slight increase of perspiration.  Then, first turning round, to make sure that he had all his belongings with him, he entered the hall-door, and passed through into his study.