"I speak to you quite frankly," said the earl. "It might be possible to gloss over my follies, and give them kindly names--to say they were but youthful follies, no worse than those of other young men: I might say that I sowed my wild oats; but I come of a truthful race, and I say I was no better--not one-half as good, in fact, as I ought to have been. Then, as a climax to my other follies, I fell in love, and persuaded the young girl I loved to marry me privately. That was bad enough, but I did worse. When we had been a short time married, we quarreled. Neither would give in, and we parted. It matters little to my story who my wife was, whether above or below me in station, whether poor or rich--suffice it to say that we parted. "Some time after I left England a little daughter was born to her. She still kept her secret. This little child she confided to the care of a servant. The servant must have known you or heard of you, for she left the little one, as you both know, at your door, and you took her in. They wrote to me and told me what they had done, far away in India. I was helpless to interfere. Then I lost my wife; but the child continued with you. I made no effort to reclaim her. I do not seek to gloss over my fault, believe me. The truth is, to a soldier in India a baby is not a very desirable object. The existence of this child was a source of embarrassment and confusion to me. I had not the means of supporting it as a daughter of the house of Studleigh should be supported, so I did what seems so fatally easy, yet always leads to bad consequences--I let circumstances drift along as they would. The end of it was that as years went on I almost forgot the child's existence." "But the money," said Mark, wonderingly, "always came the same." The earl looked up quickly. "Yes--oh--of course that was attended to," he said; but his face flushed and his eyes fell. "To my great surprise," he continued, "I found myself, by a chapter of accidents, suddenly raised to an earldom. I am Earl of Linleigh, now, and that is a very different matter from being simply Captain Studleigh. The daughter of Captain Studleigh might always remain unknown; the daughter of the Earl of Linleigh has a title and wealth of her own. You understand the difference, I am sure, Mr. Brace?" "Yes," said Mark, "I understand." "One of the first things I turned my attention to, after my accession to the estates, was the daughter my wife sent to you." He looked nervously at the farmer and his wife, still never looking at Doris.