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let her enter.
    “I knew you would, Miss Cathy. It was Lord Stanhope who thought you might not.”
    “Well, Lord Stanhope was wrong, as he is more often than not.” Cathy’s voice was slightly tart. She had never liked Harold, and she knew the feeling was mutual. “How is my father?”
    “Not very well, Miss Cathy, I’m sorry to say,” Mason told her sadly, his voice dropping to a whisper as he trailed after her to stand beside the huge four-poster bed. “He had been feeling rather low for some time—missing you, he said—and then he came up to London for the races. He—he had the attack almost at once. In this very room. His whole right side is paralyzed, Miss Cathy, and he is rarely conscious for more than a quarter-hour at a time. It’s pitiful, truly it is.”
    Cathy merely nodded in reply, the lump in her throat grown so huge that she didn’t think she could speak. Gazing down at the frail outline, barely visible beneath the piled quilts, of what had once been her handsome, robust father, she felt her heart constrict. The hair that had been as golden as her own when she had last seen him was now flecked with gray, and the face turned into the pillow was pinched and white. He looked terribly old, Cathy thought, and for the first time she admitted to herself the possibility that he might die. All the way across the Atlantic she had refused to consider it, comforting herself with the notion that all Sir Thomas needed was the careful, loving nursing of his daughter to set him to rights again. Now she saw that the case was far more desperate than she had let herself believe.
    “Oh, Papa!” she choked, dropping to her knees beside the bed and groping for her father’s emaciated hand. “Papa, it’s Cathy. I’m here, Papa.”
    The closed eyelids flickeredopen for a moment, and the faded blue eyes seemed to see her. His breath escaped in a rasping sigh. Cathy held his hand tightly, tears spilling from her eyes.
    “Cathy.” Her name was just a husky whisper, barely audible although she strained to hear. The hand she was holding squeezed hers for an instant, and then went limp. His eyes closed once more.
    “Papa!” Cathy pressed a kiss to the paper-thin flesh of his hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. That her father could be dying seemed unbelievable, but she was very much afraid it was true. Sorrow formed a hard knot of agony inside her.
    “Dr. Bowen said that sleep is the best thing for him, Miss Cathy.” Mason moved to place a gentle hand on her shoulder. She looked around blindly to see that his cheeks were as wet as her own.
    “Yes.” Cathy gulped back her tears, and, with Mason’s assistance, rose shakily to her feet. “Do you—do you have any idea what brought on the attack, Mason?”
    Mason looked at her oddly. “Lady Stanhope has not yet spoken to you, Miss Cathy?”
    “She wanted to, but I wanted to see my father. Why, Mason?”
    “I hardly know how to tell you, Miss Cathy,” he said unhappily.
    “Tell me what, Mason?” Cathy’s voice was sharp. A nameless dread was beginning to gnaw at her. Something was very wrong, that much was clear.
    “Sir Thomas was writing a letter when he was stricken, Miss Cathy,” Mason began slowly. “I—I think you’d better read it.”
    Mason crossed to the escritoire that stood beneath the damask-curtained windows, opened a drawer, and withdrew a piece of paper. He shut the drawer and came back to stand in front of her, his movements deliberate. Cathy took the paper from his outstretchedhand without a word, saw that it was addressed to her at Woodham, and unfolded it with shaking fingers. Her mouth was dry as she started to read.
    “Daughter,” the letter began. “It grieves me very much to be the bearer of tidings I can only describe as ill, but I have just come into some information that I feel should be passed on to you without delay. It is my hope that you can rectify what has happened without too much harm to your spirits or station in