"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her; interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass. Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a consideration." CHAPTER III. "WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?" After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course of a _tete-a-tete_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings." The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl.