en
he's wanted is an estimable person."

"It's not quite what I meant," she answered, laughing. "What struck me
most was that you don't seem to like gratitude."

"One ought to like it. It's supposed to be rare, but, on the whole, I
haven't found that so."

He studied her with an interest which she noticed but could not resent.
The girl had changed and gained something since their first meeting,
and he thought it was a knowledge of the world. She was, he felt,
neither tainted nor hardened by what she had learned, but her fresh
childish look which suggested ignorance of evil had gone and could not
come back. Indeed, he wondered how she had preserved it in her
father's house. This was not a matter he could touch upon, but by and
by she referred to it.

"I imagine," she said shyly, "that on the evening when you came to my
rescue in London you were surprised to find me--so unprepared; so
incapable of dealing with the situation."

"That is true," Blake answered with some awkwardness. "A bachelor
dinner, you know, after a big race meeting at which we had backed
several winners! One has to make allowances."

Millicent smiled rather bitterly. "You may guess that I had to make
them often in those days, but it was on the evening we were speaking of
that my eyes were first opened, and I was startled. But you must
understand that it was not by my father's wish I came to London and
stayed with him--until the end. He urged me to go away, but his health
had broken down and he had no one else to care for him. When he was no
longer able to get about everybody deserted him, and he felt it."

Blake was stirred to compassion. Graham had, no doubt, suffered
nothing he had not deserved, but the man had once been a social
favourite, and it was painful to think of his dying alone in poverty.
His extravagance and the shifts by which he evaded his creditors were
known, and Blake could imagine how hard he would be pressed when he lay
sick and helpless. It must have been a harrowing experience for a
young girl to nurse him and at the same time to grapple with financial
difficulties.

"I was truly sorry to hear of his death," he said. "Your father was
once a very good friend to me. But, if I may ask, how was it he let
you come to his flat?"

"I forced myself upon him," Millicent answered, with a grateful glance.
"My mother died long ago and her unmarried sisters took care of me.
They lived very simply in a small secluded c