She looked at him. His face was earnest and agitated, the eloquent eyes seemed to rain love into her own. It was hard to resist him, and yet he had been so cruel. "Why have you never written to me all these years, Ulric?" she asked, and he knew that the faltering voice meant good for him. "My darling, I tell you I dared not. No man ever so sinned against a woman as I sinned against you. I took advantage of your youth, your simplicity, your love for me, to induce you to contract a private marriage with me. Then my horrible pride got ahead of me, I quarreled with you and left you for twenty--may Heaven forgive me--twenty years. I can hardly expect that you will pardon me. How can you?" She drew a little nearer to him when she saw how unhappy he looked. "Ah, Ulric," she said, "your race are all alike faithless and debonair; even the little one is the same." The words seemed to cost her violent effort; her face grew crimson. He looked at her with brightening eyes. "The little one--our child? Oh, Estelle, you have never told me anything of our child." "You have never asked," she retorted. "No, I am to blame. What dull, stupid apathy has come over me? What have I been doing or thinking about? My wife and child to drift through all these years. Well, from the depths of my heart I say Heaven pardon me, for I am a great sinner. Estelle, tell me something about our child." The expression of his face was so pitiful that she could not help replying. "I cannot tell you much," she said. "I have been, like yourself, careless over the child. I could not keep my secret and keep her, so she went." "Yes, Lady Delapain told me; but have you never seen her? Do you know nothing of her?" "I have seen her twice." And then Lady Estelle gave him the whole history of Doris. "She is very beautiful," she said, in conclusion, "but she resembles you more than me. She is a Studleigh in face and in character. She is faithless and debonair, Ulric, as you are." "Perhaps you judge her rather harshly," he said, with great tenderness in his voice. "Why do you call her faithless, Estelle?" "Because she was engaged to marry some one who loved her with a true and tender love. She ran away from him, and almost broke his heart." "Who was the some one?" asked the earl. "Earle Moray, a poet and a gentleman--one whom a princess might marry, if she loved him." "Why did the little one run away from him? What was her reason?" "She wanted to see something of the world, so she went abroad as governess to some little children." "That was not so very bad," he said. "She might have done much worse than that. It is quite natural for a girl to want to see something of life. Where did she go to, dear?" "To Florence, with some English people, I believe." "Well, I cannot really be very angry with her for it; of course her position will be changed now. We shall have to think twice before she fulfills this engagement."