relfall her aspect was scarcely less deplorable than when
she arrived. Moreover she had cried much since the delivery of the
Threlfall letter the day before. Her eyes were red, and her small face
disfigured. Felicia, on the other hand, sat with her nose in the air,
evidently despising her mother's tears, and as sharply observant as ever
of the sights about her--the quietly moving servants, the flowers, and
silver, the strange, nice things to eat. Tatham, absorbed in his own
thoughts, did not perceive how, in addition, she watched the master of
the house; Victoria was uncomfortably aware of it.

After luncheon Tatham took up a Bradshaw lying on a table in the panelled
hall, where they generally drank coffee, and looked up the night mail to
Euston.

"I shall catch it at Carlisle," he said to his mother, book in hand.
"There will be time to hear your report before I go."

She nodded. Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.

"Why are you going away?" said Felicia suddenly.

He turned to her courteously:

"To try to straighten your affairs!"

"That won't do us any good--to go away." Her voice was shrill, her black
eyes frowned. "We shan't know what to do--by ourselves."

"And it's precisely because I also don't know exactly what to do next,
that I'm going to town. We must get some advice--from the lawyers."

"I hate lawyers!" The girl flushed angrily. "I went to one in Lucca
once--we wanted a paper drawn up. Mamma was ill. I had to go by myself.
He was a brute!"

"Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute," said Tatham, laughing. "He's a jolly
old chap."

"The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!" repeated Felicia. "He wanted to
kiss me! There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk. I threw them
at him. It cut him. I was so glad! His forehead began to bleed, and the
water ran down from his hair. He looked so ugly and silly! I walked all
the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted. We never
went to that man again."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Tatham, with disgust. For the first time
he looked at her attentively. An English girl would not have told him
that story in the same frank, upstanding way. But this little elfish
creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world,
had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know
nothing of. He did not like to think of them. That beast, her father!

He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a
li