came for her.

"Really IS her father!" The words meant TOO much to be grasped this
evening of full sensations. They left a little bruise somewhere, but
softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion at the back of her
mind. And very soon came that other sensation, so disillusioning, that
all else was crowded out. It was after a dance--a splendid dance with
a good-looking man quite twice her age. They were sitting behind some
palms, he murmuring in his mellow, flown voice admiration for her dress,
when suddenly he bent his flushed face and kissed her bare arm above the
elbow. If he had hit her he could not have astonished or hurt her more.
It seemed to her innocence that he would never have done such a thing if
she had not said something dreadful to encourage him. Without a word she
got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and
slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed up,
tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he knew
something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person who
had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and
wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who,
having been silent perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of
conversation, they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside
the chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his
ears, his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur
cap. Who had dared upset his darling? And, within the car, the little
governess chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark
corner sat silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult. Sad end
to a lovely night!

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence was
forming in her mind. Those words: "Really IS her father!" and that
man's kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of sex-mystery,
hardening the consciousness that there was something at the back of her
life. A child so sensitive had not, of course, quite failed to feel the
spiritual draughts around her; but instinctively she had recoiled
from more definite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all
so faint--Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called
"Papa." As in that word there was no depth compared with the word "Dad"
bestowed on Winton, so there had been no depth in her feelings towards
the squire. When a girl has no mem