Brooke, "that a man hardly likes to see his
daughter burst out crying and shrink away when she first looks at him."

"Oh, I was very stupid!" cried Lesley, remorsefully. "It must have
looked so bad, and I did not mean anything--at least, I meant only----"

"I understand all about it," said her aunt, "and I shall tell your
father what I think if he alludes to the matter. In the meantime you
had better go to sleep, and wake up fresh and bright in the morning.
Good-night, my dear."

And Lesley was left to her own reflections.

Although she went early to bed she did not sleep soon or soundly. There
was not much traffic along the street in which her father lived, but the
bells of St. Pancras rang out the hours and the quarters with painful
tunelessness, and an occasional rumble of wheels would startle her into
wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening
and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs
as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny in these
nocturnal habits. The life of a journalist, of a literary man, of
anybody who did any definite work in the world at all, was quite unknown
to her.

She came down to breakfast at nine o'clock, feeling weary and depressed.
Miss Brooke was kind but preoccupied; she had a committee at twelve, she
said, and another at four, so she would be obliged to leave Lesley for
the greater part of the day. "But you will have your own little
arrangements to make you know," she said, "and Sarah will show you or
tell you anything you want. You might as well fall into our ways as soon
as you can."

"Oh, yes," said Lesley. "I only want to be no trouble."

"You'll be no trouble to anybody," said Miss Brooke, cheerfully, "so
long as you find something to do, and do it. There's a good library of
books in the house, and a piano in the drawing-room; and you ought to go
out for an hour or two every day. I daresay you will be able to occupy
yourself."

"Is there any one to go out with me?" queried Lesley, timidly. She had
never been out alone in the whole course of her life.

"Go out with you?" repeated Miss Brooke, rather rudely, though with kind
intent. "An able-bodied young woman of eighteen or nineteen surely can
take care of herself! You are not in Paris now, my dear, you are in
London; and girls in London have to be independent and courageous."

Lesley felt that she was being somewhat unjustly judged, but she did not
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