No--stop; I will tell you. At the beginning of this year
I should have been married exactly twenty years. Sally is
nineteen--you remember her birthday?"

"Nineteen in August. Now, let me think!" Just at this moment the second
movement of Op. 999 came to an end, and gave an added plausibility to
the blank he needed to ponder in. The viola in the next room looked
round across her chair-back, and said, "I say, mother"--to a repetition
of which Mrs. Nightingale replied what did her daughter say? What
she said was that her mother and Mr. Fenwick were exactly like the
canaries. They talked as hard as they could all through the music, and
when it stopped they shut up. Wasn't that true? To which her mother
answered affirmatively, adding, "You'll have to put a cloth over us,
chick, and squash us out."

Fenwick was absorbed in thought, and did not notice this interlude. He
did not speak until the music began again. Then he said abruptly:

"I see the story now. Sally's father was not...."

"Was not my husband." There is not a trace of cowardice or hesitation
in her filling out the sentence. There is pain, but that again dies
away in her voice as she goes on to speak of her daughter. "I do not
connect him with her now. She is--a thing of itself--a thing of herself!
She is--she is Sally. Well, you see what she is."

"I see she is a very dear little person." Then he seems to want to say
something and to pause on the edge of it; then, in answer to a "yes"
of encouragement from her, continues, "I was going to say that she
must be very like him--like her father."

"Very like?" she asks--"or very unlike? Which did you mean?"

"I mean very like as to looks. Because she is so unlike you."

"She is like enough to him, as far as looks go. It's her only fault,
poor chick, and _she_ can't help it. Besides, I mind it less now that
I have more than half forgiven him, for her sake." The tone of her
voice mixes a sob and a laugh, although she utters neither, and is
quite collected. "But she is quite unlike him in character. Sally is
not an angel--oh dear, no!" The laugh predominates. "But----"

"But what?"

"She is not a devil." And as she said this the pain was all back again
in the dropped half-whisper in which she said it. And in that moment
Fenwick made his guess of the whole story, which maybe went nearer
than we shall do with the information we have to go upon. In this
narrative, as we tell it now, that story is _known_ only to i