"You have the privilege, you know, of being the only daughter of a man who is not only very widely known, but very much respected and admired. That doesn't seem much to you perhaps?"--for he thought he saw Lesley's lip curl, and his tone became a little sharp. "I assure you it means a great deal in a world like ours--in the world of London. It means that your father is a man of great ability and of unimpeachable honesty--I mean honesty of thought, honesty of purpose--intellectual honesty. You have no idea how rare that quality is amongst public men--or literary men--or journalists. Indeed it is a wonder that Brooke is so successful as he is, considering that he never wrote or said a word that he did not mean. No doubt that seems a small thing to you: it is not a small thing to say of a journalist now-a-days." "I don't know much about journalists," said Lesley. "But all that you are saying would be taken as a matter of course amongst _gentlemen_." There was a snub for Maurice, and a sly hit at her father, too. Maurice began to wax warm. "Miss Brooke," he said, "you entirely fail to understand me; and I can imagine that you, perhaps, fail to understand your father also." "If I do," said Lesley, proudly, "I hardly need to be set right by a stranger." The young doctor sprang to his feet. "I a stranger!" he said. "I, who have known and appreciated and worked with Caspar Brooke for the last half dozen years--I to be called a stranger by his daughter? I don't think that's fair: I don't indeed." He paused and put his tea-cup down upon the table. "If you'll only think for a minute, Miss Brooke," he said, entreatingly, with such a sudden softening of voice and manner that Lesley sat amazed, "I cannot believe but that you'll pardon me. I owe so much to your father--he has been a guide, a helper, almost a prophet to me, ever since I came across him when I was a medical student at King's College Hospital, and I only want everybody to see him with my eyes--loving and reverent eyes, I can tell you, though I wouldn't say so to everybody, seeing that love and reverence seem to have gone out of fashion! But to his daughter----" "His daughter surely does not need to be taught how to think of him by another, whether he be an old friend or a comparative stranger," said Lesley. "She can learn to know him for herself." "But _can_ she?"--Maurice Kenyon's Irish strain, which always led him to be more eager and explicit in speech than if he had been entirely of Anglo-Saxon nationality, was running away with him. "Are you sure that she can? Look here, Miss Brooke: you come to your father's house straight from a French convent, I believe. What _can_ you know of English life? of the strife of political parties, of literary parties, of faiths and theories and passions? You are plunged into the midst of a new world--it can't help but be strange to you at first, and you must feel a trifle forlorn and miserable--at least I should think so----"