As she made no answer, he looked up and saw the guilty laughter in her eyes, the conscious blushes on her cheeks. "You don't mean to say----" "I only wrote it to amuse myself," said Lesley, meekly. "I've had so little to do since I came here, and I thought I would scribble down my impressions." "My dear child," said Mr. Brooke, "if you can write as well as this, you ought to have a career before you. Why," he added, surveying her, "I had no idea of this. And I always did have a secret wish that a child of mine should take to literature. My dear----" "But I don't want to take to literature, exactly," said Lesley, with a little gasp. "I only want to amuse myself sometimes--just when I feel inclined, if you don't think it a great waste of time----" "Waste of time? Certainly not. Go on, by all means. I shall only ask to see what you do now and then; I might be able to give you a hint--though I don't know. Your style is very good already--wants a little compression, perhaps, but you can make sentences--that's a comfort." And Mr. Brooke fell to reading the manuscript again, with a very pleased look upon his face. It was while he was still reading that a servant brought in some letters which had just arrived. He opened the first that came to hand almost unthinkingly, for his mind was quite absorbed in the discovery which he had made. It was only when his eye rested on the first page of the letter that memory came back to him. He gave a great start, rose up, putting Lesley's paper away from him, and went to the other side of the room to read his letter. It was as follows:-- "DEAR MR. BROOKE,-- "I have already found a house that I think will suit me, and I hope that Lesley will join me there as soon as you can spare her. I am afraid that it is a little too late to change our respective ways of life. It would be no advantage to Lesley to live with parents who were not agreed. "Yours very truly, "ALICE BROOKE." Caspar Brooke turned round with a face that had grown strangely pale, walked across the room to Lesley, and dropped the letter in her lap. "There!" he said. "I have done my uttermost. That is your mother's reply to me." He strode out of the room, without deigning to answer her cry of surprise and inquiry, and Lesley took up the letter. It was with a burst of tears that she put it down. "Oh, mother, mother!" she cried to herself, "how can you be so unkind, so unjust, so unforgiving? He is the best man in the world, and yet you have the heart to hurt him."