"Come in."
Her maid entered.
"What is it, Janet?"
"If you please, Miss, Sir Lemuel's man has just brought me a message for you. Sir Lemuel requests, Miss, that you will come to his room before you retire."
"Dear papa, I will go at once. You need not wait for me here, Janet. Just turn the lights down low—they make the room so warm—and leave the windows partly open, and then go to bed, my girl, I shall not want you again tonight," said Salome, as she passed out of the chamber and went down to the long hall, at the opposite extremity of which was her father's room.
She entered silently, and found the banker wrapped in his gray silk dressing-gown and seated in his large resting-chair.
"Come and sit by me, my dear. I only wanted to have a little talk with you tonight," he said, holding out his hand to her.
She went up to him, clasped and kissed the out-stretched hand, and then seated herself, not on the chair by his side, for that would not have brought her near enough to him, but on the footstool at his feet, so that she could lay her head upon his knees.
"Salome, my darling, I have not been a good father to you," he said, sadly, as he ran his long white fingers through the tresses of the little dark-haired head that lay upon his knees.
"Oh, papa! the best and dearest papa that ever lived!" she answered, drawing his hand to her lips and kissing it fondly.