“I got these at the baker’s in New Sanderson,” said she.  She was dimpling with delight.  She looked very young, and yet the man continued to have that sense of dependence upon her.  She exulted openly over her supper, her cooking, and her return.  “I don’t know but I was very deceitful, papa,” she said, but with glee rather than compunction.  “Amy and Anna had no idea that I did not mean to go with them to Aunt Catherine’s, and oh, papa, what do you think I did?  What do you?”

“What, dear?”

“My trunk was packed with, with—­some old sheets and blankets and newspapers—­and all my clothes are hanging in my closet up-stairs.”  Charlotte laughed a long ring of laughter.  “I knew I was deceitful,” she said again, and laughed again.

Carroll did not laugh.  He was thinking of the Hungarian girl in Charlotte’s red dress, but Charlotte thought he was sober on account of her deceit.

“Do you think it was very wrong, papa?” she asked, with sudden seriousness, eying him wistfully.  “I will write and tell Amy to-night all about it.  I couldn’t think of any other way to do, papa.”

“I met Marie as I was coming home from the station this morning,” Carroll said, irrelevantly.

Charlotte looked at him quickly, blushed, and raised her teacup.

“I thought at first, though I knew it could not be, that I saw you coming,” said he; “something about her dress—­”

“Papa,” said Charlotte, setting down her cup, and she was half-crying—­“papa, I had to.  Marie was so shabby, and she said that her lover had deserted her because she was so poorly dressed; and though of course he could not be a very good man, nor very loyal to desert her for such a reason as that, yet those people are different, perhaps, and don’t look at things as we do; and Marie has got another place; but—­but she—­didn’t have any money, you know, and she didn’t really have a dress fit to be seen, and that dress I gave her I did not need at all—­I really did not, papa.  I have plenty besides, and so I gave it to her, and my little Eton jacket, and I told her she would certainly have every cent we owed her, and she seemed very happy.  She is going to a party to-night and will wear that dress.  She thinks she will get her lover back.  Those Hungarian men must be queer lovers.  Marie said he would not marry her, anyway, until she had some money for her dowry, but she thinks she may be able to keep him until then with my red silk dress, and I told her she should certainly have it all in time.”  Charlotte’s voice, in making the last statement, was full of pride and confidence without a trace of interrogation.

“She shall if I live, dear,” said Carroll.  All at once there came over him, stimulated with food for heart and body, such a rush of the natural instinct for life as to completely possess him.  It seemed to him that as a short time before he had hungered for death, he now hungered for life.  Even the desire to live and pay that miserable little Hungarian servant-maid was a tremendous thing.  The desire to live for the smallest virtues, ambitions, and pleasures of life was compelling force.