But it needed some very decided crisis to bring her to the point of overcoming all the apprehensions which lay in the way of an appeal to the stern old man This crisis had arrived.

The illness which was now upon her she felt to be more serious than any she had yet suffered.

Suppose she were to die, and Ida to be left alone in the world Even before she heard of the child's dismissal from school she had all but made up her mind to write to her father, and the shock of that event gave her the last impulse.

She wrote a letter of pitiful entreaty.

Would he help her to some means of earning a living for herself and her child?
She could not part from Ida.
Perhaps she had not long to live, and to ask her to give up her child would be too cruel.