Lesley got up in a few moments and walked quietly out of the room. But she forgot her book. It fell noiselessly on the soft fur rug, and lay there, with leaves flattened and back bent outwards. Caspar Brooke was one of the people who cannot bear to see a book treated with anything less than reverence. He picked it up, straightened the leaves, and looked casually at the title. It was "The Unexplored." He held it for a minute, gazing before him with wide eyes as if he were troubled or perplexed. Then he shook his head, sighed, smiled, and put it down upon the nearest table. "Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder if I frightened her at all!" CHAPTER XVI. AT MRS. ROMAINE'S. The reason why Caspar Brooke spoke somewhat sharply to Lesley was not far to seek. He had been to Mrs. Romaine's house to tea. The sequence of cause and effect can easily be conjectured. "How charmingly your daughter sang!" Mrs. Romaine began, when she had got Mr. Brooke into his favorite corner, and given him a cup of her best China tea. "Yes, she sang very well," said Brooke, carelessly. "I had no idea that she _could_ sing! Why, by the bye--did you not tell me that she said she was not musical?--declined singing lessons, and so on?" "Yes, I think I said so. Yes, she did." "She must be very modest!" said Mrs. Romaine, lifting her eyebrows. "I don't know--I fancy she did not want to be indebted to me for more than she could help." Mrs. Romaine looked pained, and kept for a few moments a pained silence. "My poor friend!" she said at last. "This is very sad! Could she"--and Brooke knew that the pronoun referred to Lady Alice, not to Lesley--"could she not be content with abandoning you, without poisoning your daughter's mind against you?" Caspar said nothing. He leaned forward, tea-cup in hand, and studied the carpet. It was, perhaps, hard for him to find a suitable reply. "It is too much," Rosalind continued, with increasing energy. "You have taken not a daughter, but an enemy into your house. She sits and criticizes all you do--sends accounts to her mother, doubtless, of all your comings and goings. She looks upon you as a tyrant, and a disreputable person, too. She has been taught to hate you, and she carries out the teaching--oh, I can see it in every line of her face, every inflection of her voice: she has been taught to loathe you, my poor, misjudged friend, and she does not disguise her loathing!" It is not quite pleasant for a man to hear that his daughter hates him, and makes no secret of the hatred. Caspar immediately concluded that Lesley had made some outspoken remarks upon the subject to Mrs. Romaine. Secretly he felt hurt and angry: outwardly he smiled. "What would you have?" he said, lightly but bitterly. "Lady Alice has no doubt indoctrinated her daughter, as you say; all that I can expect from Lesley is civility. And I generally get that."