her? This was the most poignant pang of all. Without being selfish, it is still impossible to feel a wrong of this kind to another so acutely as to yourself. He had deprived her of the comfort of knowing that she had a mother, of communicating with her, of retaining some hold upon that closest of natural friends. That injury she had condoned and forgiven; but when Frances saw how her father’s action must have shaped the idea of herself in the mind of her mother, there was a moment in which she felt that she could not forgive him. If she had received year by year these tender letters, yet never had been moved to answer one of them, what a creature must she have been, devoid of heart or common feeling, or even good taste, that superficial grace by which the want of better things is concealed! She was more horrified by this thought than by any other discovery she could have made. She seemed to see the Frances whom her mother knew--a little ill-conditioned child; a small, petty, ungracious, unloving girl. Was this what had been thought of her? And it was all his fault--all her father’s fault! At first she could see no excuse for him. She would not allow to herself that any love for her, or desire to retain her affection, was at the bottom of the concealment. She got a sheet of paper, and began to write with passionate vehemence, pouring forth all her heart. “Imagine that I have never seen your dear letters till to-day--never till to-day! and what must you think of me?” she wrote. But when she had put her whole heart into it, working a miracle, and making the dull paper to glow and weep, there came a change over her thoughts. She had kept his secret till now. She had not betrayed even to Constance the ignorance in which she had been kept; and should she change her course, and betray him now?