“But we must give them every cent of the money, father,” she insisted; “we must make everything right.”

“Oh, yes!  Oh, yes, we’ll fix it up somehow with the creditors,” he would say.

Then he would scowl and rub his shorn head with his tremulous old hands.

“What did they do with the house, Margaret?” he asked, over and over, a furtive gleam of anxiety in his eyes.  “They didn’t tear it down; did they?”

He waxed increasingly anxious on this point as the years of his imprisonment dwindled at last to months.  And then her dream had unexpectedly come true.  She had money—­plenty of it—­and nothing stood in the way.  She could never forget the day she told him about the house.  Always she had tried to quiet him with vague promises and imagined descriptions of a place she had completely forgotten.

“The house is ours, father,” she assured him, jubilantly.  “And I am having it painted on the outside.”

“You are having it painted on the outside, Margaret?  Was that necessary, already?”

“Yes, father....  But I am Lydia.  Don’t you remember?  I am your little girl, grown up.”

“Yes, yes, of course.  You are like your mother—­ And you are having the house painted?  Who’s doing the job?”

She told him the man’s name and he laughed rather immoderately.

“He’ll do you on the white lead, if you don’t watch him,” he said.  “I know Asa Todd.  Talk about frauds—­ You must be sure he puts honest linseed oil in the paint.  He won’t, unless you watch him.”

“I’ll see to it, father.”

“But whatever you do, don’t let ’em into my room,” he went on, after a frowning pause.

“You mean your library, father?  I’m having the ceiling whitened.  It—­it needed it.”

“I mean my bedroom, child.  I won’t have workmen pottering about in there.”

“But you won’t mind if they paint the woodwork, father?  It—­has grown quite yellow in places.”

“Nonsense, my dear!  Why, I had all the paint upstairs gone over—­let me see—­”

And he fell into one of his heavy moods of introspection which seemed, indeed, not far removed from torpor.

When she had at last roused him with an animated description of the vegetable garden, he appeared to have forgotten his objections to having workmen enter his chamber.  And Lydia was careful not to recall it to his mind.

She was still sitting before his desk, ostensibly absorbed in the rows of incomprehensible figures Deacon Whittle, as general contractor, had urged upon her attention, when Martha again parted the heavy cloud of her thoughts.

“The minister, come to see you again,” she announced, with a slight but mordant emphasis on the ultimate word.

“Yes,” said Lydia, rousing herself, with an effort.  “Mr. Elliot, you said?”

“I s’pose that’s his name,” conceded Martha ungraciously.  “I set him in the dining room.  It’s about the only place with two chairs in it; an’ I shan’t have no time to make more lemonade, in case you wanted it, m’m.”