“Is it?”

Irene was troubled by this old manner of her father.  Could he have forgotten why she was there?

“Yes, it is pleasant,” he replied, and then his eye dropped in a thoughtful way.

“I think, sometimes, that your attractive New York friends have made you neglectful of your lonely old father.  You don’t come to see him as often as you did a year ago.”

Mr. Delancy said this with simple earnestness.

“They shall not keep me from you any more, dear father,” replied Irene, meeting his humor, yet heart-appalled at the same time with this evidence that his mind was wandering from the truth.

“I don’t think them safe friends,” added Mr. Delancy, with seriousness.

“Perhaps not,” replied Irene.

“Ah!  I’m glad to hear you say so.  Now, you have one true, safe friend.  I wish you loved her better than you do.”

“What is her name?”

“Rose Carman,” said Mr. Delancy, with a slight hesitation of manner, as if he feared repulsion on the part of his daughter.

“I love Rose, dearly; she is the best of girls; and I know her to be a true friend,” replied Irene.

“Spoken like my own daughter!” said the old man with a brightening countenance.  “You must not neglect her any more.  Why, she told me you hadn’t written to her in six months.  Now, that isn’t right.  Never go past old, true friends for the sake of new, and maybe false ones.  No—­no.  Rose is hurt; you must write to her often—­every week.”

Irene could not answer.  Her heart was beating wildly.  What could this mean?  Had reason fled?  But she struggled hard to preserve a calm exterior.

“Will Hartley be up to-day?”

Irene tried to say “No,” but could not find utterance.

Mr. Delancy looked at her curiously, and now in a slightly troubled way.  Then he let his eyes fall, and sat holding his cup like one who was turning perplexed thoughts in his mind.

“You are not well this morning, father,” said Irene, speaking only because silence was too oppressive for endurance.

“I don’t know; perhaps I’m not very well; and Mr. Delancy looked across the table at his daughter very earnestly.  “I had bad dreams all last night, and they seem to have got mixed up in my thoughts with real things.  How is it?  When did you come up from New York?  Don’t smile at me.  But really I can’t think.”

“I came yesterday,” said Irene, as calmly as she could speak.

“Yesterday!” He looked at her with a quickly changing face.

“Yes, father, I came up yesterday.”

“And Rose was here?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Delancy’s eyes fell again, and he sat very still.

“Hartley will not be here to-day?”

Mr. Delancy did not look up as he asked this question.

“No, father.”

“Nor to-morrow?”

“I think not.”

A sigh quivered on the old man’s lips.