‘Oh, Oswald!’ she said, with the tears coming to her eyes. ‘Papa is going away again! I don’t know why. I don’t even know where he is going. It appears that he cannot make himself comfortable at home as he once thought, and the house is to be shut up, and I am going back to the Hill with Aunt Cherry. It is ungrateful--horribly ungrateful of me to be sorry--but I am, I cannot help it. I thought that papa would have settled and stayed at home, and now all that is over.’ ‘Ah!’ said Oswald. ‘So! I did not think it would be so serious; it is about my mother, I suppose.’ ‘About your mother!’ ‘Yes. People have interfered; they say he is not to come to see her every day as he has been in the habit of doing. It is supposed not to be liked by the governor out in India. It is all the absurdest nonsense. The governor out in India is as indifferent as I am, Cara--you may take my word for that--and only a set of busybodies are to blame. But I am very sorry if it is going to bother you.’ Cara did not make any answer. A flush of visionary shame came over her face. What did it mean? Such questions pain the delicate half-consciousness of a girl that there are matters in the world not fit for her discussion, beyond anything that elder minds can conceive. The suggestion of these hurts her, as elder and stouter fibres are incapable of being hurt, and this all the more when the parties involved are any way connected with herself. That there could be any question of the nature of her father’s regard for any woman, much less for Mrs. Meredith, a woman whom she knew and loved, cut Cara like a knife. Her very soul shrank within her. She changed the subject eagerly-- ‘Were you ever at the Hill, Oswald? You must come. It will soon be spring now! look at the crocuses! and in the primrose time the woods are lovely. I was almost brought up there, and I always think of it as home.’ ‘But I must ask some more about this--about your father. It ought to be put a stop to----’ ‘Oh, don’t say any more,’ cried Cara, hurriedly, with another blush. ‘You must let me know how your own affairs go on, and what happens; and, Oswald, oh! I hope you will take care and not let _her_ get into trouble about you. If she was to lose her home and her comfort or even to get scolded----’ ‘Getting scolded is not such a dreadful punishment, Cara.’