"Then may I ask what was your motive for declining to take lessons in London when I asked to do so? You even went so far as to make use of a subterfuge: you gave me to understand that you had no musical power at all, and that you knew nothing and could do nothing?"

He paused as if he expected a reply; but Lesley did not say a word.

"I cannot understand it," Mr. Brooke went on; "but,"--after a pause--"I suppose there is no reason why I should. I did not come to say anything much about that part of the business. I came rather to suggest that as you have a good voice, it is wrong not to cultivate it. And your lessons will give you something to do. It seems to me rather a pity, my dear, that you should do nothing but sit round and read novels--which, your aunt tells me, is your princ.i.p.al occupation. Suppose you try to find something more useful to do?"

He spoke with a smile now and in a softer voice; but Lesley was much too hurt and depressed to say a word. He looked at her steadfastly for a minute or two, and decided that she was sullen.

"I will see about the lessons for you," he said, getting up and speaking decidedly, "and I hope you will make the most of your opportunities. How much time have you been in the habit of devoting to your singing every day?"

"An hour and a half," said Lesley, in a very low voice.

"And you left off practising as soon as you came here? That was a great pity; and you must allow me to say, Lesley, very silly into the bargain.

Surely your own conscience tells you that it was wrong? A voice like yours is not meant to be hidden."

Lesley wished that at that moment she could find any voice at all. She sat like a statue, conscious only of an effort to repress her tears. And Mr. Brooke, having said all that he wanted to say, took up a book, and thought how difficult it was to manage women who met remonstrances in silence.

Lesley got up in a few moments and walked quietly out of the room. But she forgot her book. It fell noiselessly on the soft fur rug, and lay there, with leaves flattened and back bent outwards. Caspar Brooke was one of the people who cannot bear to see a book treated with anything less than reverence. He picked it up, straightened the leaves, and looked casually at the t.i.tle. It was "The Unexplored."

He held it for a minute, gazing before him with wide eyes as if he were troubled or perplexed. Then he shook his head, sighed, smiled, and put it down upon the nearest table. "Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder if I frightened her at all!"

CHAPTER XVI.

AT MRS. ROMAINE'S.

The reason why Caspar Brooke spoke somewhat sharply to Lesley was not far to seek. He had been to Mrs. Romaine's house to tea. The sequence of cause and effect can easily be conjectured.

"How charmingly your daughter sang!" Mrs. Romaine began, when she had got Mr. Brooke into his favorite corner, and given him a cup of her best China tea.

"Yes, she sang very well," said Brooke, carelessly.

"I had no idea that she _could_ sing! Why, by the bye--did you not tell me that she said she was not musical?--declined singing lessons, and so on?"

"Yes, I think I said so. Yes, she did."

"She must be very modest!" said Mrs. Romaine, lifting her eyebrows.

"I don't know--I fancy she did not want to be indebted to me for more than she could help."

Mrs. Romaine looked pained, and kept for a few moments a pained silence.

"My poor friend!" she said at last. "This is very sad! Could she"--and Brooke knew that the p.r.o.noun referred to Lady Alice, not to Lesley--"could she not be content with abandoning you, without poisoning your daughter's mind against you?"

Caspar said nothing. He leaned forward, tea-cup in hand, and studied the carpet. It was, perhaps, hard for him to find a suitable reply.

"It is too much," Rosalind continued, with increasing energy. "You have taken not a daughter, but an enemy into your house. She sits and criticizes all you do--sends accounts to her mother, doubtless, of all your comings and goings. She looks upon you as a tyrant, and a disreputable person, too. She has been taught to hate you, and she carries out the teaching--oh, I can see it in every line of her face, every inflection of her voice: she has been taught to loathe you, my poor, misjudged friend, and she does not disguise her loathing!"

It is not quite pleasant for a man to hear that his daughter hates him, and makes no secret of the hatred. Caspar immediately concluded that Lesley had made some outspoken remarks upon the subject to Mrs. Romaine.

Secretly he felt hurt and angry: outwardly he smiled.

"What would you have?" he said, lightly but bitterly. "Lady Alice has no doubt indoctrinated her daughter, as you say; all that I can expect from Lesley is civility. And I generally get that."

"Civility? Between father and daughter? When she ought to be proud of such a father--proud of all that you are, and all that you have done!

She should be adoring you, slaving for you, ready to sacrifice herself at your smallest word--and see what she is! A machine, silent, useless, unwilling--from whom all that you can claim is--civility! Oh, women are capable sometimes of taking a terrible revenge!"

She threw her hands out with a gesture of despair and deprecation, which was really fine in its way; then she rose from her chair, went to the mantelpiece, and stood with her face bent upon her clasped hands. Caspar rose too, and stood on the hearthrug beside her, looking down at the pretty ruffled head, with something very like affection in his eye.

He did not quite understand this emotion of hers, but its sincerity touched as well as puzzled him. For she was sincere as far as he was concerned, and this sincerity gave her a certain amount of power, such as sincerity always gives. The ring of true feeling in her voice could not be counterfeited, and Caspar was flattered by it, as any man would have been flattered at having excited so much sympathy in the heart of a talented and beautiful woman.

He knew that Alice had been jealous of Rosalind Romaine, but, he thought, quite unreasonably so. Poor Rosalind, tied to a dry old stick of a husband, to whom she did her duty most thoroughly, was naturally glad to talk now and then to a man who knew something of Art and Life.

That was simple enough, and he had been glad of her interest and sympathy, especially as these were denied to him by his wife. There was nothing for Lady Alice to be jealous about. And he had dismissed the matter impatiently from his thoughts. Alice had left him because she hated his opinions, his manner of life, his profession--not because she was jealous of Rosalind Romaine. But Rosalind knew better.

The woman's sympathy affected him so far, however, that, after standing silent for a minute or two, he laid his hand softly upon her arm. It was a foolish thing to do, but then Caspar Brooke was never a particularly wise man, in spite of his goodness of heart and fertility of brain. And Rosalind felt, by the thrill that ran through her at his touch, that she had gained more from him than she had ever gained before. What would he say next?

Well, he did not say very much. "Your sympathy, Rosalind," he said, "is very pleasant--very dear to me. But you must not give me too much of it.

Sympathy is enervating, as other men have found before me!"

"May I not offer you mine?" she said, plaintively. "It is so hard to be silent! If only I could make Lesley understand what you are--how n.o.ble--how good----"

Caspar laughed, and took away his hand. "Don't talk to her about me; it would do no good," he said.

He stood in the firelight, looking so ma.s.sive, so stern, so resolved, that Mrs. Romaine lost herself for a moment in admiration of his great frame and leonine head. And as she paused he spoke again.

"I have not lately observed much hostility to myself in Lesley's demeanor," he said. "At first, of course--but lately--well, I have been more struck by a sort of languor, a want of interest and comprehension, than anything else. No doubt she feels that she is in a new world----"

"Ah yes, a world of intellect and activity to which she has not been accustomed," said Mrs. Romaine, briskly. Since Caspar had removed his hand she had been standing erect, watchfully observant of him. It was by his moods that she intended to regulate her own. "I suppose she has been accustomed to nothing but softness and self-indulgence; and she does not understand this larger life to which she now has access."

"Poor child!" said Mr. Brooke.

But this was not at all the remark that Mrs. Romaine wanted him to make.

She tried to beat back the tide of paternal affection that was evidently setting in.

"She wants rousing I am afraid. She ought not to be allowed to sink into a dreamy, listless state. It must be very trying for you to see it; you must be pained by the selfishness and waywardness from which it proceeds----"

"Do you think it does?" said Mr. Brooke, almost wistfully. "I should be sorry to think Lesley selfish. Sophy says that she is more ignorant than selfish."

"But what is ignorance save a form of selfishness?" cried Rosalind, indignantly. "She might know if she chose! She does know the common duties of humanity, the duty of every man or woman to labor for others, to gain knowledge, to make broad the borders of light! Oh, I cannot bear to hear ignorance alleged as an excuse for self-love! It is impossible that any one with Lesley's faculties should not see her duty, even if she is idle and indifferent enough to let it pa.s.s when she does see it."

Mr. Brooke sat down, regardless of the fact that Mrs. Romaine was standing, and looked at the carpet again with a sigh.

"You may be right," he said, in a pained tone; "but if so, what am I to do?"

"You must speak to her," said Rosalind, energetically. "You must tell her not to be idle and obstinate and wayward: you must show her her duty, so that she may have no excuse for neglecting it."

He shrugged his shoulders.