n, sighed again;
it was always very painful to him to listen to views which did not
coincide with his own.

"Well," he said at length, "there is, after all, the hope that you may
convert him."

"I hope you do not want me to turn into one of those hateful little
prigs, who go about lamenting over their unregenerate parents," said
Erica, naughtily. Then, softening down, she added, "I think I know what
you mean perhaps I was wrong to speak like that, only somehow, knowing
what my father is, it does grate so to put it in that way. But don't
think I would not give my life for him to come to the light here and now
for I would! I would!"

She clasped her hands tightly together, and turned quickly away.

Mr. Fane-Smith was touched.

"Well, my dear," he said. "You may be right, after all, and I may be
wrong. All my anxiety is only for your ultimate good."

The train was on the point of starting, he gave her a warm hand shake,
and in spite of all that jarred in their respective natures, Erica ended
by liking him the best of her new relations.

CHAPTER XXX. Slander Leaves a Slur

For slander lives upon succession,
Forever housed, where it once
gets possession. Comedy of Errors.

Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an infidel.
Hudibras

"Blessed old London, how delightful it is to come back to it!" exclaimed
Erica, as she and Tom drove home from Paddington on the afternoon of her
return from Greyshot. "Tell the man not to go through the back streets,
there's a good boy! Ah, he's doing it of his own accord! Why, the park
trees are much browner than the Mountshire ones!"

"We have been prophesying all manner of evil about your coming back,"
said Tom looking her over critically from head to foot. "I believe
mother thought you would never come that the good Christians down at
Greyshot having caught you would keep you, and even the chieftain was
the least bit in the world uneasy."

"Nonsense," said Erica, laughing, "he knows better."

"But they did want to keep you?"

"Yes."

"How did you get out of it?"

"Said, 'Much obliged to you, but I'd rather not.' Enacted Mrs. Micawber,
you know, 'I never will, no I never will leave Mr. Micawber.'"

"Mr. Fane-Smith must have been a brute ever to have proposed such a
thing!"

"Oh, no! Not at all! Within certain limits he is a kind-hearted man,
only he is one of those who believe in that hateful saying, 'Men without
the know