eared he could not have shown his face in
Pall Mall, or on the racecourses, and every moment of his life would be
full of humiliations and bitterness. Virtually then, for such a man as
he was, life in England was over. Then there was you. You were a pretty
child and the Earl had no children. If your father was dead the story
would be forgotten, you would marry brilliantly and an ugly page in the
family history would be blotted out. That was how they looked at it--it
was how they put it to your father."

"He consented?"

"Yes, he consented! He saw the wisdom of it for your sake, for the sake
of the family, even for his own sake. The Earl settled an income upon
him and he left England secretly on the morning of his release. We had
the news of his death only a week or two ago."

She stood up, her eyes blazing, her hands clenched together.

"I thank God," she said "that I have found the courage to break away
from those people and take a little of my life into my own hands. You
can tell them this if you will, Cecil,--my uncle Lord Davenant, your
mother, and whoever had a say in this miserable affair. Tell them from
me that I know the truth and that they are a pack of cowardly, unnatural
old women. Tell them that so long as I live It will never willingly
speak to one of them again.

"I was afraid you'd take it like that," he remarked dolefully.

"Take it like that!" she repeated in fierce scorn. "How else could a
woman hear such news? How else do you suppose she could feel to be told
that she had been hoodwinked, and kept from her duty and a man's heart
very likely broken, to save the respectability of a worn-out old family.
Oh, how could they have dared to do it? How could they have dared to do
it?"

"It was a beastly mistake," he admitted.

A whirlwind of scorn seemed to sweep over her. She could keep still no
longer. She walked up and down the little room. Her hands were clenched,
her eyes flashing.

"To tell me that he was dead--to let him live out the rest of his poor
life in exile and alone! Did they think that I didn't care? Cecil," she
exclaimed, suddenly turning and facing him, "I always loved my father!
You may think that I was too young to remember him--I wasn't, I loved
him always. When I grew up and they told me of his disgrace I was
bitterly sorry, for I loved his memory--but it made no difference.
And all the time it was a weak, silly lie! They let him come out, poor
father, without a friend to speak