ned his self-possession. It took him still longer to recover from a
certain shock of surprise.

"Write to your mother!" he exclaimed. "Well, but, of course--why should
you not write to your mother?"

And then Lesley raised her head and looked at him with such amazement
and perplexity that her father felt absolutely annoyed.

"Who on earth put it into your head that you might not write? Am I such
a tyrant--such an unfeeling monster----? Good heavens! what
extraordinary idea is this! Who said that you were not to write to her?"

"My mother herself," said Lesley, drawing herself a little away from
him, and still looking into his face.

"Your _mother_? Absurd! Why, what--what----"

He faltered, frowned, turned away to the mantelpiece, and struck his
hand heavily upon it.

"I never meant _that_," he said. It seemed as if vexation and
astonishment prevented him from saying more.

"My mother said that it was agreed--years ago--that when I came to you,
we were to have no communication," said Lesley, trembling, and yet
resolute to have her say. "Was not that so?"

"I remember something of the sort," he answered, reluctantly, frowning
still and looking down. "I did not think at the time of what it implied.
And when the time drew near for you to make the visit, the question was
not raised. We corresponded through a third party--the lawyer, you know.
Perhaps--at the time--I had an idea of preventing letters, but not
recently. Nobody mentioned it. Why"--his anger rising, as a man's anger
often does rise when he perceives himself to have been in the
wrong--"your mother might at least have mentioned it if she felt any
doubt!"

"I suppose," said Lesley, rather haughtily, "that my mother did not want
to ask a favor of you."

He flung himself round at that. "Your mother must have given you a
strange idea of me!" he said, with a mixture of anger and mortification
which it humiliated him to show, even while he could not manage to hide
it. "One would have said I was an ogre--a maniac. But she misjudged me
all her life--it is useless to expect anything else--of course she would
try to bias you!"

"I never knew that you were even alive until the day that I left the
convent," said Lesley. "My mother certainly did not try to prejudice me
before then: she simply kept silence."

"Silence is the worst condemnation? What had I done that I should be
separated from my child so completely?" said the man, the bitterness of
years displa