“Now go down to dinner, my dear,” he said, leading her to the door.  “I will follow soon.”

“Don’t be long,” replied his daughter, “or I shall come up again,” and she ran down the stairs, her heart feeling strangely light.

Her father looked after her until she vanished, then heaving a regretful sigh returned to his study, and taking out the scattered papers fastened them together, and endorsed them,

“My Confession.”  He then placed them in an envelope, sealed it, and put it back in the desk.  “If all that is in that packet were known,” he said aloud, as he left the room, “what would the world say?”

That night he was singularly brilliant at the dinner table.  Generally a very reticent and grave man, on this night he laughed and talked so gaily that the very servants noticed the change.  The fact was he felt a sense of relief at having unburdened his mind, and felt as though by writing out that confession he had laid the spectre which had haunted him for so long.  His daughter was delighted at the change in his spirits, but the old Scotch nurse, who had been in the house since Madge was a baby, shook her head—­

“He’s fey,” she said gravely.  “He’s no lang for the warld.”

Of course she was laughed at—­people who believe in presentiments generally are—­but, nevertheless, she held firmly to her opinion.

Mr. Frettlby went to bed early that night, the excitement of the last few days and the feverish gaiety in which he had lately indulged proving too strong for him.  No sooner had he laid his head on his pillow than he dropped off to sleep at once, and forgot in placid slumber the troubles and worries of his waking hours.

It was only nine o’clock, so Madge stayed by herself in the great drawing-room, and read a new novel, which was then creating a sensation, called “Sweet Violet Eyes.”  It belied its reputation, however, for it was very soon thrown on the table with a look of disgust, and rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted.  If man is a gregarious animal, how much more, then, is a woman?  This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth.  “A female Robinson Crusoe,” says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature—­“a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to.”  This remark, though severe, nevertheless contains several grains of truth, for women, as a rule, talk more than men.  They are more sociable, and a Miss Misanthrope, in spite of Justin McCarthy’s, is unknown—­at least in civilised communities.  Miss Frettlby, being neither misanthropic nor dumb, began to long for some one to talk to, and, ringing the bell, ordered Sal to be sent in.  The two girls had become great friends, and Madge, though by two years the younger, assumed the role of mentor, and under her guidance Sal was rapidly improving.  It was a strange irony