"At any rate I shall try," she answered with a bright smile. "Who?" suddenly walking over to a picture, "is this handsome young man in racing colours?"
"Do you not know?" he asked with an air of distressed surprise.
"You!" she exclaimed, with an unflattering start.
"Yes; that was taken after I won the Civil Service Cup, at Lucknow, on Good Fortune. Names go by contraries, for since that day my luck turned. I have been going steadily down the ladder ever since."
"Oh, father," and she paused and turned and looked at him; "why do you say so? What do you mean?"
"I've done those things which I ought not to have done, and not done those things which I ought to have done, and there's no health in me."
She gazed into his eyes, laden with inexpressible remorse; then turned away to hide her own tears—and presently said, in a totally different voice:
"Ah, I see," pointing to the bookcase, "you have all Sir Walter Scott, tattered and torn—how I love him!"
"Is he your only love so far?"
"Well," with an effort at gaiety, "I must confess I am very fond of Charles Lamb and Emerson and George Eliot."