And oh, to be shut out: to be so lost: never to have looked into her father's face or touched him, since that hour! She could not go to bed, poor child, and never had gone yet, since then, without making her nightly pilgrimage to his door.

It would have been a strange sad sight, to see her' now, stealing lightly down the stairs through the thick gloom, and stopping at it with a beating heart, and blinded eyes, and hair that fell down loosely and unthought of; and touching it outside with her wet cheek.

But the night covered it, and no one knew.
The moment that she touched the door on this night, Florence found that it was open.

For the first time it stood open, though by but a hair's-breadth: and there was a light within.

The first impulse of the timid child--and she yielded to it--was to retire swiftly.