"It is almost impossible to ask Aunt Sophy; she never sees where the difficulty lies. I know she is kind--but she does not understand what I want."

Caspar nodded. "That is one reason why I spoke to you just now," he said, much more gently than usual. "I knew that she was a little brusque sometimes; and I suppose I am not much better. As a rule a father does not talk to his girls as I have been talking to you, I fancy. I am almost as ignorant of a father's duties to his daughter as you say you are of the habits of English bourgeois society--for I suppose that is what you mean?"

He smiled a little--the slight smile of a satire which Lesley always dreaded; and yet, she remembered, his voice had been very kind. It softened again into its gentlest and most musical tones, as he said--

"You must take us as you find us, child: we shall not do you much harm, and it will not be for long."

Lesley was emboldened by the gentle intonation to draw closer to him, and to lay an entreating hand upon his arm.

"Oh, father," she said, "if you would but let me write to mamma!"

And then she uttered a little sob, and the tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. As for Caspar Brooke, he stood like a man amazed, and repeated her words almost stupidly.

"_Write to mamma?_" he said.

"It would do me good: it would not do any harm," said Lesley, hurriedly, brokenly, and clasping his arm with both hands to enforce her plea. "I would not tell her anything that you did not like: I should never say anything but good about you; but, oh, there are so many things that puzzle me, and that I should like to consult her about. You see, although I was not much with her, I used to write to her twice a week, and she wrote to me oftener, sometimes; and I told her everything, and she used to advise me and help me! And I miss it so much--it is that that makes me unhappy; it seems so hard never to write and never to hear from her! I feel sometimes as if I could not bear it; as if I should have to run away to her again and tell her everything! n.o.body is like her--n.o.body--and to be a year without her is terrible!"

And Lesley put her head down on her father's arm and cried unrestrainedly, with a sort of newborn instinct that he sympathised with her, and would not repulse her confidence.

As for Caspar Brooke, his face had turned quite pale: he stood like a statue, with features rigidly set, listening to Lesley's outburst of pleading words. It took him a little time to find his voice, even when he had at last a.s.similated the ideas contained in her speech and regained his self-possession. It took him still longer to recover from a certain shock of surprise.

"Write to your mother!" he exclaimed. "Well, but, of course--why should you not write to your mother?"

And then Lesley raised her head and looked at him with such amazement and perplexity that her father felt absolutely annoyed.

"Who on earth put it into your head that you might not write? Am I such a tyrant--such an unfeeling monster----? Good heavens! what extraordinary idea is this! Who said that you were not to write to her?"

"My mother herself," said Lesley, drawing herself a little away from him, and still looking into his face.

"Your _mother_? Absurd! Why, what--what----"

He faltered, frowned, turned away to the mantelpiece, and struck his hand heavily upon it.

"I never meant _that_," he said. It seemed as if vexation and astonishment prevented him from saying more.

"My mother said that it was agreed--years ago--that when I came to you, we were to have no communication," said Lesley, trembling, and yet resolute to have her say. "Was not that so?"

"I remember something of the sort," he answered, reluctantly, frowning still and looking down. "I did not think at the time of what it implied.

And when the time drew near for you to make the visit, the question was not raised. We corresponded through a third party--the lawyer, you know.

Perhaps--at the time--I had an idea of preventing letters, but not recently. n.o.body mentioned it. Why"--his anger rising, as a man's anger often does rise when he perceives himself to have been in the wrong--"your mother might at least have mentioned it if she felt any doubt!"

"I suppose," said Lesley, rather haughtily, "that my mother did not want to ask a favor of you."

He flung himself round at that. "Your mother must have given you a strange idea of me!" he said, with a mixture of anger and mortification which it humiliated him to show, even while he could not manage to hide it. "One would have said I was an ogre--a maniac. But she misjudged me all her life--it is useless to expect anything else--of course she would try to bias you!"

"I never knew that you were even alive until the day that I left the convent," said Lesley. "My mother certainly did not try to prejudice me before then: she simply kept silence."

"Silence is the worst condemnation? What had I done that I should be separated from my child so completely?" said the man, the bitterness of years displaying itself in a way as unexpected to him as to his daughter. "It is not my fault, I swear, that I have lived without a wife, without--well, well! it is not you to whom I ought to say this. We will not refer to it again. About this letter writing--I might say, as perhaps I did say at the time the arrangement was made, that surely I had a right to claim you entirely for one year at least; but I don't--I won't. If I did ever say so, Lesley, I regret the words exceedingly.

Ever since you came to me, I have had no idea but that you were writing to her regularly and freely; and I never--never in my right mind--wished it otherwise."

"But mamma talked of an agreement----"

"That was years ago. I must have said something in my heat which the lawyers--the people who arranged things--interpreted wrongly. And your mother, as you say, did not care to ask me for anything. I can only say, Lesley, that I am sorry the mistake arose."

His voice was grave and cold again, almost indifferent. He stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hand supporting his head, his eyes averted from the girl. A close eye might have observed that the veins of his forehead were swollen, and the pulse at his temple was beating furiously: otherwise he had mastered all signs of agitation. Lesley hesitated a moment: then came up to him, and put her slim fingers into his hand.

"Father," she said, softly, "if we _have_ misjudged you--mamma and I--won't you forgive us?"

For answer he took her face between his two hands, bent down and kissed it tenderly.

"You don't remember sitting on my knee when you were a tiny little thing, do you?" he asked her. "You would not go to sleep at nights without a kiss from me before I went out. You were rather fond of me then, child! I wish things had turned out differently!"

He spoke sadly, and Lesley returned his kiss with a new feeling of affection of which she had not been conscious before, but which she would have found it difficult to translate into words. Before she could manage to reply, the handle of the door was turned, and father and daughter stood apart as quickly as if they had had no right to stand with arms enlaced and faces almost touching: indeed, the situation was so new to both of them that they felt something like shame and alarm as they turned to meet the expected Doctor Sophy.

But it was not Doctor Sophy. It was Sarah with the tea-tray, very resentful at not having had it rung for earlier--she having been instructed not to bring it up until Miss Lesley rang the bell. And after Sarah came Mr. Maurice Kenyon, unannounced, after his usual fashion. And on hearing his voice, Lesley slipped away between the curtains into the library, and upstairs, through the library door.

"Why, Brooke, old fellow, you're not often to be found here at this hour!" began Maurice. He looked on Caspar Brooke as a prophet and a hero in his heart; but his manner before the world was characterized by the frankest irreverence. Brooke was one of those men who are never older than their companions.

"Well, you must be neglecting your patients shamefully to be here at all. What do you want at this feminine meal?"

"I didn't come for tea," said Maurice, actually growing a little redder as he spoke. "I came to see Miss Brooke."

"Oh, she's gone to a meeting of some Medical a.s.sociation or other," said Caspar, indifferently, as he sat down in Lesley's place at the dainty tea-table, and poured out a cup of tea with the manner of a man who was accustomed to serving himself. "Here, help yourself to sugar and cream."

"Thanks, I won't have any tea. I did not mean your sister: I meant Miss Lesley--I thought I saw her as I came in."

"Anything important?" said Caspar, blandly. He was certain that Lesley had gone away to cry--women always cry!--and he did not want her to be disturbed. Although he had quarrelled with his wife, he understood feminine susceptibilities better than most men.

"Oh, no. Only to ask her to sing at the Club on Sunday. It's my turn to manage the music for that day, you know. Trent is going to sing too."

"Ah," said Mr. Brooke. Then, after a pause: "I will ask her. But I don't think she will be able to sing on Sunday. It strikes me she has an engagement."

He could not say to Ethel's brother what was in his mind, and yet he was troubled by the intensity of his conviction that she was throwing herself away upon "a cad." He must take some other method in the future of giving Maurice a hint about young Trent.

Maurice thought, not untruly, that there was something odd in his tone.

"Isn't she well?" he asked, with his usual straightforwardness. "I hope there is nothing wrong."

"I did not say there was anything wrong, did I?" demanded Caspar. Then, squaring his shoulders, and sitting well back in his chair, with his hands plunged into the pockets of his old study coat, and his eyes fixed on his visitor's face, he thus acquitted himself--"Maurice, my young friend, I am and have been a most confounded a.s.s."

"Oh?" said Maurice, interrogatively.

"I think it would relieve me--if I weren't out of practice--to swear.

But I've preached against 'langwidge' so long at the club that I don't think I could get up the necessary stock of expletives."

"I'll supply you. I shouldn't have thought that there was a lack of them down in your printing offices about one or two o'clock every morning, from what I've heard. What is it, if I may ask? Anything wrong with the Football Club?"

"Football Club! My dear fellow, I have a private life, unfortunately, as contradistinguished from your everlasting clubs and printing offices."