to him and they hustled him out of the
country. And I, whose place was there with him, never knew!"

"You were only a child, Ernestine. It was twelve years ago."

"Child! I may have been only a child, but I should have been old enough
to know where my place was. Thank God I have done with these people and
their disgusting shibboleth of respectability."

"You are a little violent," he remarked.

"Pshaw!" She flashed a look of scorn upon him. "You don't understand!
How should you, you are of their kidney--you're only half a man.
Thank God that my mother was of the people! I'd have died to have gone
smirking through life with a brick for a heart and milk and water in my
veins! Of all the stupid pieces of brutality I ever heard of, this is
the most callous and the most heartbreaking."

"It was a great mistake," he said, "but I believe they did it for the
best."

She sat down with a little gesture of despair.

"I really think you'd better go away, Cecil," she said. "You exasperate
me too horribly. I shall strike you or throw something at you soon. Did
it for the best! What a miserable whine! Poor dear old dad, to think
that they should have done this thing."

She buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed for the second time
since her childhood. Davenant was wise enough to attempt no sort of
consolation. He leaned a little forward and hid his own face with the
palm of his hand. When at last she looked up her face had cleared and
her tone was less bitter. It would have gone very hard with the Earl of
Eastchester, however, if he had called to see his niece just then.

"Well," she said, "I want to know now why, after keeping silent all this
time, you thought it best to tell me the truth this afternoon?"

"Because," he answered, "you told me that you had just been to see
Scarlett Trent!"

"And what on earth had that to do with it?"

"Because Scarlett Trent was with your father when he died. They were on
an excursion somewhere up in the bush--the very excursion that laid the
foundation of Trent's fortune."

"Go on," she cried. "Tell me all that you know! this is wonderful!"

"Well, I am glad to tell you this at any rate," he said. "I always liked
your father and I saw him off when he left England, and have written to
him often since. I believe I was his only correspondent in this country,
except his solicitors. He had a very adventurous and, I am afraid, not a
very happy time. He never wrote cheerfully, and h