een able to begin an apology she was not
to be allowed to finish with, "And suppose he has...?"

However, her sense of an untruthfulness that was more than merely
technical was based not so much on the bare fact of a kissing-relation
having come about, as upon a particular example. She knew it was the
merest hypocrisy to make believe that the climax of that interview at
Riverfordhook, where there were the moonrise and things, did not
constitute a pledge on the part of both. However, Tishy is not the
first young lady, let me tell you--if you don't know already--who has
been guilty of equivocation on those lines. It is even possible that
her father was conniving at it, was intentionally accepting what he
knew to be untrue, to avoid the trouble of further investigation, and
to be able to give his mind to the demolition of that ignoramus. A
certain amount of fuss was his duty; but the sooner he could find an
excuse to wash his hands of these human botherations and get back to
his inner life the better.

Perhaps it was a sense of chill at the suspicion that her father was
not concerned enough about her welfare that made Laetitia try to arrest
his retirement into his inner life. Or it may have been that she was
sensitive, as young folk are, at her new and strange experience of Real
Love, and at the same time grated on--scraped the wrong way--in her
harsh collision with her mother, who was showing Cupid no quarter, and
was only withheld from overt acts of hostility to Julius Bradshaw by
the knowledge that excess on her part would precipitate what she sought
to avert.

Whatever the cause was, her momentary sense of relief that her father
was not going to catechize her was followed by a feeling that she
almost wished he would. It would be so nice to have a natural parent
that was really interested in his daughter's affairs. Poor Tishy felt
lonely, and as if she was going to cry. She must unpack her heart, even
if it bored papa, who she knew wanted to turn her out and write. She
broke down over it.

"Oh, papa--papa! Indeed, I want to do everything you wish--whatever you
tell me. I _will_ be good, as we used to say." A sob grew in her throat
over this little nursery recollection. "Only--only--only--it isn't
really quite true about no promises. We haven't made them, you know,
but they're _there_ all the same." Tishy stops suddenly to avoid a sob
she knows is coming. A pocket-handkerchief is called in to remove tears
surreptiti