least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.

"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"

"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
afraid that it is partly my fault."

"Your fault? Why what wicked practises have you been up to since I was
here last?" he asked, teasing her.

A question evoking, in Damaris, sharp inward debate. For her father's
melancholy humour weighed on her, causing her perplexity and a measure of
self-reproach. She would have given immensely much to unburden herself to
this wise and faithful counsellor; and confide to him the--to
her--strangely moving fact of Darcy Faircloth's existence. Yet,
notwithstanding her conviction of Colonel Carteret's absolute loyalty,
she hesitated; restrained in part by modesty, in part by the fear of
being treacherous. Would it be altogether honourable to give away the
secret places of Charles Verity's life--of any man's life if it came to
that--even to so honourable and trusted a friend? She felt handicapped by
her own ignorance moreover, having neither standards nor precedents for
guidance. She had no idea--how should she?--in what way most men regard
such affairs, how far they accept and condone, how far condemn them. She
could not tell whether she was dealing with a case original and
extraordinary, or one of pretty frequent occurrence in the experience of
those who, as the phrase has it, know their world. These considerations
kept her timid and tongue-tied; though old habit, combined with
Carteret's delightful personality and the soothing influence of the dusky
evening quiet, inclined her to confidences.

"It's not anything I've done," she presently took him up gravely. "But,
quite by chance, I learned something which I think the Commissioner Sahib
would rather not have had