offending?"

"I suppose it could.... Yes, of course.... Only it will be conspicuous.
You see, Mr. Skeel is much sought after in certain circles--beginning to
be pursued and----"

"He asked me."

"Dear, it's quite all right----"

"Let me tell you, please.... He _did_ know my mother."

"I supposed so."

"Yes. He was the man. I want you to know what he told me.... I always
wish you to know everything that is in my--mind--always, for ever."

She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty, bare feet extended. One
silken sleeve of her negligee had fallen to the shoulder, revealing
the perfect symmetry of her arm. But he put from his mind the ever
latent artistic delight in her, closed his painter's eye to her
protean possibilities, and resolutely concentrated his mental forces
upon what she was now saying:

"He turns out to be the same man my mother wrote to--and who wrote to
her.... They were in love, then. He didn't say why he went away,
except that my mother's family disliked him.... She lived at a house
called Fane Court.... He spoke of my mother's father as Sir Barry
Fane...."

"That doesn't surprise me, Sweetness."

"Did _you_ know?"

"Nothing definite." He looked at the lovely, slender-limbed girl there
in the starry dusk. "I knew nothing definite," he repeated, "but there
was no mistaking the metal from which you had been made--or the mould,
either. And as for Soane----" he smiled.

She said:

"If my name is really Fane, there can be only one conclusion; some
kinsman of that name must have married my mother."

He said:

"Of course," very gravely.

"Then who was he? My mother never mentioned him in her letters. What
became of him? He must have been my father. Is he living?"

"Did you ask Mr. Skeel?"

"Yes. He seemed too deeply affected to answer me. He must have loved
my mother very dearly to show such emotion before me."

"What did you ask him, Dulcie?"

"After we left the piano?"

"Yes."

"I asked him that. I had only a few more moments alone with him before
he left. I asked him about my mother--to tell me how she looked--so I
could think of her more clearly. He has a picture of her on ivory. He
is to bring it to me and tell me more about her. That is why I must
see him to-morrow--so I may ask him again about my father."

"Yes, dear...." He sat very silent for a while, then rose, came over,
and seated himself on the padded arm of Dulcie's chair, and took both
her hands into his:

"Lis