“Do you deny then,” the baronet replied with contemptuous force, “do you dare to deny—to my face, that you knew?” Vaughan stared. “You will say presently,” he replied, “that I knew her to be your daughter when I made her acquaintance on the coach a week ago. At a time when you knew nothing yourself.” “As to that I cannot say one way or the other,” Sir Robert rejoined. “I do not know how nor where you made her acquaintance. But I do know that an acquaintance so convenient, so coincident, could hardly be the work of chance!” “Good G—d! Then you will say also that I knew who she was when I called on her the day after, and again two days after that—while you were still in ignorance?” “I have said,” the baronet answered with cold decision, “that I do not know how you made, nor why you followed up your acquaintance with her. But I have, I cannot but have my suspicions.” “Suspicions? Suspicions?” Vaughan cried bitterly. “And on suspicion, the base issue of prejudice and dislike——” “No, sir, no!” Sir Robert struck in. “Though it may be that if I knew who introduced you to her, who opened this house to you, and the rest, I might find ground for more than suspicion! The schoolmistress might tell me somewhat, and—you wince, sir! Ay,” he continued in a tone of triumph. “I see there is something to be learned! But it is not upon suspicion that I charge you to-day! It is upon the best of grounds. Did you not before my eyes and in the presence of two other witnesses, read, no farther back than the day before yesterday, in the drawing-room of my house, the whole story of my daughter’s movements up to her departure from London for Bristol! With the name of the school to which she was consigned? Did you not, sir? Did you not?” “Never! Never!” “What?” The astonishment in Sir Robert’s voice was so real, so unfeigned, that it must have carried conviction to any listener. Vaughan passed his hand across his brow; and Mary, who had hitherto kept her face hidden, shivering under the stroke of each harsh word—for to a tender heart what could be more distressing than this strife between the two beings she most cherished?—raised her head imperceptibly. What would he answer? Only she knew how her heart beat; how sick she was with fear; how she shrank from that which the next minute might unfold! And yet she listened. “I—I remember now,” Vaughan said—and the consternation he felt made itself heard in his voice. “I remember that I looked at a paper——” “At a paper!” Sir Robert cried in a tone of withering contempt. “At a detailed account, sir, of my daughter’s movements down to her arrival at Bristol! Do you deny that?” he continued grimly. “Do you deny that you perused that account?”