uppose that she
is ashamed of her father and declines to meet any one connected with
him. It is very wrong and very narrow of her. If I could talk to her for
ten minutes and tell her how the poor old chap used to dream about her
and kiss her picture, I can't think but she'd be sorry."

"Try and think," she said, looking still away from him, "that she must
have another reason. You say that you liked her picture! Try and be
generous in your thoughts of her for its sake."

"I will try," he answered, "especially--"

"Yes?"

"Especially--because the picture makes me think--sometimes--of you!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

Trent had done many brave things in his life, but he had never been
conscious of such a distinct thrill of nervousness as he experienced
during those few minutes' silence. Ernestine, for her part, was
curiously exercised in her mind. He had shaken her faith in his
guilt--he had admitted her to his point of view. She judged herself from
his standpoint, and the result was unpleasant. She had a sudden impulse
to tell him the truth, to reveal her identity, tell him her reasons for
concealment. Perhaps her suspicions had been hasty. Then the personal
note in his last speech had produced a serious effect on her, and all
the time she felt that her silence was emboldening him, as indeed it
was.

"The first time I saw you," he went on, "the likeness struck me. I felt
as though I were meeting some one whom I had known all my life."

She laughed a little uneasily. "And you found yourself instead the
victim of an interviewer! What a drop from the romantic to the prosaic!"

"There has never been any drop at all," he answered firmly, "and you
have always seemed to me the same as that picture--something quite
precious and apart from my life. It's been a poor sort of thing perhaps.
I came from the people, I never had any education, I was as rough as
most men of my sort, and I have done many things which I would sooner
cut off my right hand than do again. But that was when I lived in the
darkness. It was before you came."

"Mr. Trent, will you take me back to Lady Tresham, please?"

"In a moment," he answered gravely. "Don't think that I am going to be
too rash. I know the time hasn't come yet. I am not going to say any
more. Only I want you to know this. The whole success of my life is as
nothing compared with the hope of one day--"

"I will not hear another word," she interrupted hastily, and underneath
her white