ature for
whom it would not be well to be brought up according to the Contessa's
canons, and follow her example in the world. He remembered, in the light
of this new possibility, the levity with which he had received his
wife's distress about Bice, and how lightly he had laughed at Lucy's
horror as to the Contessa's ideas of marriage, and of what her
_protegee_ was to do. He had said if they could catch any decent fellow
with money enough it was the best thing that could happen to the girl,
and that Bice would be no worse off than others, and that she herself,
after the training she had gone through, was very little likely to have
any delicacy on the subject. But when it had once occurred to him that
the girl of whom he spoke so lightly might be his own child, an
extraordinary change came over Sir Tom's views. He laughed no longer--he
became so uneasy lest something should be done or said to affect Bice's
good name, or throw her into evil hands, that his thoughts had circled
unquietly round the house in Mayfair, and he had spent far more of his
time there on the watch than he himself thought right. He knew very well
the explanation that would be given of those visits of his, and he did
not feel sure that some good-natured friends might not have already
suggested suspicion to Lucy, who had certainly been very strange since
their arrival in town. But he would not give up his watch, which was in
a way, he said to himself, his duty, if---- He followed the girl's
movements with disturbed attention, and would hurry into the Park to
ride by her, to shut out an unsuitable cavalier, and make little
lectures to her as to her behaviour with an embarrassed anxiety which
Bice could not understand but which amused more than it benefited the
Contessa, to whom this result of her mystification was the best fun in
the world. But it was not amusing to Sir Tom. He regarded the society of
men who gathered about the ladies with disgust. Montjoie was about the
best--he was not old enough to be much more than silly--but even
Montjoie was not a person whom he would himself choose to be closely
connected with. Then came the question: If it should turn out that she
was _that_ child, was it expedient that any one should know of it? Would
it be better for her to be known as Sir Thomas Randolph's daughter, even
illegitimate, or as the relative and dependent of the Forno-Populo? In
the one case, her interests would have no guardian at all; in the other