ld be there to bring us back."

The man touched his cap and the two young people passed through the park
gate and found themselves upon the high road.

* * * * *

It was still very dark, with just a wan reflection in the distance of
the sky vaguely outlining some cloud-shapes to the eastward to give some
promise of the day. There was no sound to break the silence of the
fields, and as they walked briskly along Charles and Therese could hear
their footsteps ringing on the hard surface of the frozen ground.

"It must please you awfully to be going to meet your father," said Mme.
de Langrune's granddaughter half questioningly. "It is a long time since
you have seen him, isn't it?"

"Three years," Charles Rambert answered, "and then just for a few
minutes. He is coming home from America now, and before that he
travelled in Spain for a long time."

"He was travelling the whole time you were a child, wasn't he?"

"Yes, always: either in Colombia, looking after his rubber plantations
there, or in Spain, where he has a good deal of property too. When he
was in Paris he used to come to the school and ask for me, and I saw him
in the parlour--for a quarter of an hour."

"And your mother?"

"Oh, mamma was different. You know, Therese, I spent all the childhood
that I can remember at the school. I liked the masters and had good
chums, and was very happy there, and if the truth must be told I looked
forward with anything but pleasure to the holidays, when I had to go to
my parents' house. I always felt a stranger with them; my real home was
the school-room, where I had my desk and all my own interests. And then,
you know, when one is little one doesn't understand things much; I
didn't feel having hardly any family, very much."

"But you loved your mother very much?"

Therese asked the question quite anxiously, and it was patent that she
would have thought it dreadful if her companion had not had a real
affection for his mother.

"Oh, yes, I loved her," Charles Rambert answered; "but I hardly knew her
either." And as Therese showed her surprise he went on, telling her
something of the secret of his lonely childhood. "You see, Therese, now
that I am a man I guess lots of things that I could not have had even a
suspicion of then. My father and mother did not get on well together.
They were what you call an ill-assorted couple. They were both very
good, but their characters did not harmonise.