uld find any voice at all. She
sat like a statue, conscious only of an effort to repress her tears. And
Mr. Brooke, having said all that he wanted to say, took up a book, and
thought how difficult it was to manage women who met remonstrances in
silence.

Lesley got up in a few moments and walked quietly out of the room. But
she forgot her book. It fell noiselessly on the soft fur rug, and lay
there, with leaves flattened and back bent outwards. Caspar Brooke was
one of the people who cannot bear to see a book treated with anything
less than reverence. He picked it up, straightened the leaves, and
looked casually at the title. It was "The Unexplored."

He held it for a minute, gazing before him with wide eyes as if he were
troubled or perplexed. Then he shook his head, sighed, smiled, and put
it down upon the nearest table. "Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder
if I frightened her at all!"

CHAPTER XVI.

AT MRS. ROMAINE'S.

The reason why Caspar Brooke spoke somewhat sharply to Lesley was not
far to seek. He had been to Mrs. Romaine's house to tea. The sequence of
cause and effect can easily be conjectured.

"How charmingly your daughter sang!" Mrs. Romaine began, when she had
got Mr. Brooke into his favorite corner, and given him a cup of her best
China tea.

"Yes, she sang very well," said Brooke, carelessly.

"I had no idea that she _could_ sing! Why, by the bye--did you not tell
me that she said she was not musical?--declined singing lessons, and so
on?"

"Yes, I think I said so. Yes, she did."

"She must be very modest!" said Mrs. Romaine, lifting her eyebrows.

"I don't know--I fancy she did not want to be indebted to me for more
than she could help."

Mrs. Romaine looked pained, and kept for a few moments a pained silence.

"My poor friend!" she said at last. "This is very sad! Could she"--and
Brooke knew that the pronoun referred to Lady Alice, not to
Lesley--"could she not be content with abandoning you, without poisoning
your daughter's mind against you?"

Caspar said nothing. He leaned forward, tea-cup in hand, and studied the
carpet. It was, perhaps, hard for him to find a suitable reply.

"It is too much," Rosalind continued, with increasing energy. "You have
taken not a daughter, but an enemy into your house. She sits and
criticizes all you do--sends accounts to her mother, doubtless, of all
your comings and goings. She looks upon you as a tyrant, and a
disreputable person, too.