Brooke turned round with a face that had grown strangely pale,
walked across the room to Lesley, and dropped the letter in her lap.

"There!" he said. "I have done my uttermost. That is your mother's reply
to me."

He strode out of the room, without deigning to answer her cry of
surprise and inquiry, and Lesley took up the letter.

It was with a burst of tears that she put it down. "Oh, mother, mother!"
she cried to herself, "how can you be so unkind, so unjust, so
unforgiving? He is the best man in the world, and yet you have the heart
to hurt him."

She did not see her father again until the next day, and then, although
she made no reference in words to the letter which she restored to him,
her pale and downcast looks spoke for her, and told the sympathy which
she did not dare to utter. Mr. Brooke kissed her, and felt vaguely
comforted; but it began to occur to him that he had made Lesley's
position a hard one by insisting on her visit to his house, and that it
might have been happier for her if she had remained hostile to himself,
or ignorant of his existence. For now, when she went back to her mother,
would not the affection that she evidently felt for him rise up as a
barrier between herself and Lady Alice? Would she not try to fight for
him? She was brave enough, and impetuous enough, to do it. And then
Alice might justly accuse him of having embittered the relation,
hitherto so sweet, between mother and daughter, and thereby inflicted on
her an injury which nothing on earth could repair or justify.

Could nothing be done to remedy this state of things? Caspar Brooke
began to feel worried by it. His mind was generally so serene that the
intrusion of a personal anxiety seemed monstrous to him. He found it
difficult to write in his accustomed manner: he felt a diminution of his
interest in the club. With masculine impatience of such an unwonted
condition, he went off at last to Maurice Kenyon, and asked him
seriously whether his brain, his heart, or his liver were out of order.
For that something was the matter with him, he felt sure, and he wanted
the doctor to tell him what it was.

Maurice questioned and examined him carefully, then assured him with a
hearty laugh that even his digestion was in the best possible working
order.

Brooke gave himself a shake like a great dog, looked displeased for a
moment, and then burst out laughing too.

"I suppose it is nothing, after all," he said. "I've been a trifle