So neatly and so cleverly had Annette performed her task, that when Miss Davis met Beecher at breakfast, she felt that a species of reserve was necessary as to the reasons of her father's flight; that, as he had not directly communicated with herself, her duty was simply to accept of the guidance he had dictated to her. Besides this, let it be owned, she had not yet rallied from the overwhelming astonishment of her first meeting with her father, so utterly was he unlike all that her imagination had pictured him! Nothing could be more affectionate, nothing kinder, than his reception; a thoughtful anxiety for her comfort pervaded all he said. The gloomy old Tirlemont even caught up an air of home as she passed the threshold; but still he was neither in look, manner, nor appearance what she fancied. All his self-restraint could not gloss over his vulgarity, nor all his reserve conceal his defects in breeding. His short, dictatorial manner with the servants,--his ever-present readiness to confront nobody saw what peril,--a suspectful insistence upon this or that mark of deference as a right of which he might possibly be defrauded,--all gave to his bearing a tone of insolent defiance that at once terrified and repelled her. To all her eager questionings as to their future life, where and how it was to be passed, he would only answer vaguely or evasively. He met her inquiries about the families and friends of her schoolfellows in the same way. Of her pleasures and pursuits, her love of music, and her skill in drawing, he could not even speak with those conventionalities that disguise ignorance or indifference. Of the great world--the “swells” he would have called them--he only knew such as were on the turf. Of the opera, he might possibly tell the price of a stall, but not the name of a singer; and as to his own future, what or where it should be, Grog no more knew than who would be first favorite for the Léger a century hence. To “fence off” any attempt “to pump him” in the ring, to dodge a clever cross-examiner in a court of justice, Davis would have proved himself second to none,--these were games of skill, which he could play with the best,--but it was a very different task to thread his way through the geography of a land he had not so much as heard of, and be asked to act as guide through regions whose very names were new to him. The utmost that Lizzy could glean from that long first evening's talk was, that her father had few or no political ambitions, rather shunned the great world, cared little for dukes or duchesses, nor set any great store on mere intellectual successes. “Perhaps,” thought she, “he has tried and found the hollowness of them all; perhaps he is weary of public life; perhaps he 'd like the quiet pleasures of a country house, and that calm existence described as the chateau life of England. Would that he were only more frank with me, and let us know each other better!”