“I knew him very well--better than most people. I was one of those who felt the deepest regret----” She stood gazing at him with her face lifted to him with so profound an interest and desire to know, that he stopped short, startled by the intensity of her look. “Miss Waring,” he said, “it is a very delicate subject to talk to their child upon.” “Oh, I know it is. I don’t like to ask--and yet it seems as if I ought to know.” Frances was seized with one of those sudden impulses of confidence which sometimes make the young so indiscreet. If she had known Sir Thomas intimately, it would not have occurred to her; but as a stranger, he seemed safe. “No one has ever told me,” she added in the heat of this sudden overflow, “neither how it was or why it was--except Markham, who says it was his fault.” “There were faults on all sides, I think,” said Sir Thomas. “There always are in such cases. No one person is able to carry out such a prodigious mistake. You must pardon me if I speak plainly. You are the only person whom I can ask about my old friend.” “Oh, I like you to speak plainly,” cried Frances. “Talk to me about him; ask me anything you please.” The tears came into her voice, and she put her hands together instinctively. She had been feeling very lonely and home-sick, and out of accord with all her surroundings. To return even in thought to the old life and its associations brought a flood of bitter sweetness to her heart. “I can see at least,” said Sir Thomas, “that he has secured a most loving champion in his child.” This arrested her enthusiasm in a moment. She was too sincere to accept such a solution of her own complicated feelings. Was she the loving champion which she was so suddenly assumed to be? She became vaguely aware that the things which had rushed back upon her mind and filled her with longing were not the excellences of her father, but rather the old peace and ease and ignorance of her youthful life, which nothing could now restore. She could not respond to the confidence of her father’s friend. He had kept her in ignorance; he had deceived her; he had not made any attempt to clear the perplexities of her difficult path, but left her to find out everything, more perhaps than she yet knew. Sir Thomas was a little surprised that she made him no reply; but he set it down to emotion and agitation, which might well take from so young and innocent a girl the possibility of reply. “I don’t know whether I am justified in the hope I have been entertaining ever since you came,” he said. “It is very hard that your father should be banished from his own country and all his duties by--what was, after all, never a very important cause. There has been no unpardonable wrong on either side. He is terribly sensitive, you know. And Lady Markham--she is a dear friend of mine; I have a great affection for her----” “If you please,” said Frances quickly, “it is not possible for me to listen to any discussion of mamma.”