ted five minutes. He was not, however, upset, as might
have been expected. He took her to his rooms in a quiet terrace behind
the promenade and comfortably near his club. The sun-blinds were down
outside his sitting-room windows, and the room seemed cool and pleasant.

Then it was that Meg discovered that her father was looking at her in
quite a new way. Almost, in fact, as though he had never seen her
before.

Was it her short hair? she wondered.

Yet that was not very noticeable under such a shady hat.

Major Morton had vigorously opposed the nursemaid scheme. To the
sympathetic ladies who attended the same strictly evangelical church of
which he was a pillar, he confided that his only daughter did not care
for "a quiet domestic life." It was a grief to him--but, after all,
parents are shelved nowadays; every girl wants to "live her own life,"
and he would be the last man to stand in the way of his child's
happiness. The ladies felt very sorry for Major Morton and indignant
with the hard-hearted, unfilial Meg. They did not realise that had Meg
lived with her father--in rooms--and earned nothing, the Major's
delicate digestion might occasionally have suffered, and Meg would
undoubtedly have been half-starved.

To-day, however, he was more hopeful about Meg than he had been for a
long time. Since the Trent episode he had ceased even to imagine her
possible marriage. By her own headstrong folly she had ruined all her
chances. "The weariful rich" who had got her the post did not spare him
this aspect of her deplorable conduct. To-day, however, there was a rift
in these dark clouds of consequence.

Captain Middleton--he only knows how--had persuaded Major Morton to go
with him to see the horse, had asked his quite useless advice, and had
subtly and insidiously conveyed to the Major, without one single
incriminating sentence, a very clear idea as to his own feelings for the
Major's daughter.

Major Morton felt cheered.

He had no idea who Miles really was, but he had remarked the gunner tie,
and, asking to what part of the Royal Regiment Miles belonged, decided
that no mere pauper could be a Horse-Gunner.

He regarded his daughter with new eyes.

She was undoubtedly attractive. He discovered certain resemblances to
himself that he had never noticed before.

Then he informed her that he had promised they would both lunch with her
agreeable friend at the Queen's Hotel: "He made such a point of it,"
said Major Mo