ure?" queried the doctor.

"She has written a novel or two. She writes for various papers--well and
smartly, I believe. She is a thorough woman of the world. Naturally, a
girl brought up as Lesley has been will----"

"--Will find her detestable," said Kenyon, briskly, "as I and Ethel do.
You'll excuse this expression of opinion; you've heard it before."

For a moment Caspar Brooke's face was overcast; then he broke into
uneasy laughter, and rose from his chair, shaking himself a little as a
big dog sometimes does when it comes out of the water.

"You are incorrigible," he said. "A veritable heretic on the matter of
my friend, Mrs. Romaine. By the by, I must remind you, Kenyon, that Mrs.
Romaine is a very old friend of mine."

His manner changed slightly as he spoke. There was a little touch of
quiet hauteur in his look and tone, as if he wished to repel unsolicited
criticism. Maurice understood the man too well to be offended, and
merely changed the subject.

But when, after half an hour's chat, the young doctor left the house,
his mind reverted to the topic which Mr. Brooke had broached.

"Mrs. Romaine, indeed! Why, the man's mad--to introduce her as a friend
to his daughter! Does not all the world know that Mrs. Romaine caused
the separation between him and his wife? And will the poor girl know? or
has she been kept in the dark completely as to the state of affairs?
Upon my word I'm sorry for her. It strikes me that she will have a hard
row to hoe, if Mrs. Romaine is at her father's ear."

CHAPTER V.

OLIVER.

Mr. Brooke had not long quitted Mrs. Romaine's drawing-room when it was
entered by another man, whose personal resemblance to Mrs. Romaine
herself was so striking that there could be little doubt as to their
close relationship to one another. It was one of those curious
likenesses that exist and thrive upon difference. Rosalind was not tall,
and she was undeniably plump; while her younger brother, Oliver Trent,
was above middle height, and of a spare habit. The creamy white of Mrs.
Romaine's complexion had turned to deadly pallor in Oliver's thin,
hairless face: and her most striking features were accentuated, and even
exaggerated in his. Her arched and mobile eyebrows, her dark eyes, her
broad nostrils, curved mouth, and finely-shaped chin, were all to be
found, with a subtle unlikeness, in Oliver's face, and the jetty hair,
short as it was on the man's head, grew low down on the brow and the