“One thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words,” he said. “Oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them,” said Constance. “I always say what I mean. And you must know that things went very far--so far that I couldn’t put up with it any longer; so I made up my mind all at once that I would come off to you.” “And I tell you, you are welcome, my dear. It is so long since I saw you that I could not have recognised you. That is natural enough. But now that you are here--I cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till I know all the circumstances----” “Oh, wisdom! I don’t suppose there is any wisdom about it. No one expects wisdom from me. But what could I do? There was nothing else that I could do.” “At all events,” said Waring, with a little inclination of his head and a smile, as if he were talking to a visitor, Frances said to herself--“Frances and I will forgive any lack of wisdom which has given us--this pleasure.” He laughed at himself as he spoke. “You must expect for a time to feel like a fine lady paying a visit to her poor relations,” he said. “Oh, I know you will approve of me when you hear everything. Mamma says I am a Waring all over, your own child.” The sensations with which Frances stood and listened, it would be impossible to describe. Mamma! who was this, of whom the other girl spoke so lightly, whom she had never heard of before? Was it possible that a mother as well as a sister existed for her, as for others, in the unknown world out of which Constance had come? A hundred questions were on her lips, but she controlled herself, and asked none of them. Reflection, which comes so often slowly, almost painfully, to her came now like the flash of lightning. She would not betray to any one, not even to Constance, that she had never known she had a mother. Papa might be wrong--oh, how wrong he had been!--but she would not betray him. She checked the exclamation on her lips; she subdued her soul altogether, forcing it into silence. This was the secret she had been so anxious to penetrate, which he had kept so closely from her. Why should he have kept it from her? It was evident it had not been kept on the other side. Whatever had happened, had Frances been in trouble, she knew of no one with whom she could have taken refuge; but her sister had known. Her brain was made dizzy by these thoughts. It was open to her now to ask whatever she pleased. The mystery had been made plain; but at the same time her mouth was stopped. She would not confuse her father, nor betray him. It was chiefly from this bewildering sensation, and not, as her father, suddenly grown acute in respect to Frances, thought, from a mortifying consciousness that Constance would speak with more freedom if she were not there, that Frances now spoke. “I think,” she said, “that I had better go and see about the rooms. Mariuccia will not know what to do till I come; and you will take care of Constance, papa.”