“No, dear.  I don’t think so.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go again this week, papa.  To-day is Thursday.”

“Perhaps I won’t, dear.”

After dinner Carroll lay down on the divan in the den and Charlotte covered him up, and after a while he fell asleep; but even asleep, when she stole in to look at him, there was the same strange expression on his face.  It was the face of a man whose mind is set irrevocably to an end.  A martyr going to the stake might have had that same look, or even a criminal who was going to his doom with a sense of its being his just deserts, and with the bravery that befitted a man.

That evening Anderson came to call, and Carroll answered the door-bell.  He took him into the parlor, and spoke at once of the subject uppermost in the minds of both.

“Charlotte has told me,” Carroll said, simply.  He extended his hand with a pathetic, deprecatory air.  “You know what you are doing when you ask for my daughter’s hand,” he said.  “You know she might have a parentage which would reflect more credit upon her.”

“I am quite satisfied,” Anderson replied, in a low voice.  All at once, looking at the other man, it struck him that he had never in his life pitied any one to such an extent, and that he pitied him all the more because Carroll seemed one to resent pity.

“This much I will say—­I can say it confidently now,” said Carroll, “I shall meet all my indebtedness.  You will have no reason to hesitate on that account,” but he paused a moment.  “I am driven to resorting to any honest method which I can find to enable me so to do,” he continued.  He made a slight emphasis upon the word honest.

“I can understand that as fully, possibly, as any man,” Anderson replied, gravely.

Carroll looked at him.  “Yes, so you can,” he said—­“so you can.  Well, this much I will say for myself, Mr. Anderson.  I am proud and glad to confide my daughter to your keeping.  I am satisfied, and more than satisfied, with her choice.”

“Thank you,” replied Anderson.  He felt a constraint, even embarrassment, as if he had been a very young man.  He was even conscious of blushing a little.

“Sit down,” said Carroll, placing a chair for him, and offering him a cigar.

Then he went to call Charlotte.  It was at that moment rather a hard experience for Charlotte that it was not her mother instead of her father who called her to go down and see her lover.  She had thought, with a passion of yearning, of her mother who had done the same thing, and would understand, as she fluffed out her pretty hair around her face in front of the glass in her room.  When her father called her she ran down, but instead of going at once into the parlor, where she knew her lover was waiting for her, she ran into the den.  She felt sure that her father had retreated there.  She found him there, as she had thought, and she flung her arms around his neck.