slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed
up, tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he
knew something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person
who had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and
wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who,
having been silent perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of
conversation, they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside
the chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his ears,
his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur cap. Who
had dared upset his darling? And, within the car, the little governess
chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark corner sat
silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult. Sad end to a
lovely night!

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence was
forming in her mind. Those words: "Really IS her father!" and that man's
kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of sex-mystery,
hardening the consciousness that there was something at the back of her
life. A child so sensitive had not, of course, quite failed to feel the
spiritual draughts around her; but instinctively she had recoiled from
more definite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all so
faint--Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called
"Papa." As in that word there was no depth compared with the word "Dad"
bestowed on Winton, so there had been no depth in her feelings towards
the squire. When a girl has no memory of her mother, how dark are many
things! None, except Betty, had ever talked of her mother. There was
nothing sacred in Gyp's associations, no faiths to be broken by any
knowledge that might come to her; isolated from other girls, she had
little realisation even of the conventions. Still, she suffered
horribly, lying there in the dark--from bewilderment, from thorns dragged
over her skin, rather than from a stab in the heart. The knowledge of
something about her conspicuous, doubtful, provocative of insult, as she
thought, grievously hurt her delicacy. Those few wakeful hours made a
heavy mark. She fell asleep at last, still all in confusion, and woke up
with a passionate desire to KNOW. All that morning she sat at her piano,
playing, refusing to go out, frigid to Betty and the little governess,
till the former was reduced to tears and