Madam Carroll rose, came across, and kissed her. "My dear," she said, "a wife has more opportunities than a daughter can have; that is all. The Major loves you as much as ever. He is also very proud of you. So proud, indeed, that he has a great desire to have you proud of him as well; you always have been extremely proud of him, you know, and he remembers it. This feeling causes him, perhaps, to make something of--of an effort when he is with you, an effort to appear in every respect himself, as he was before his illness--as he was when you last saw him. This effort is at times fatiguing to him; yet it is probable that he will not relinquish it while he feels that you are noticing or--or comparing. I have not spoken of this before, because you have never liked to have me tell you anything about your father; even as a child you always wanted to get your knowledge directly from him, not from me. I have never found fault with this, because I knew that it came from your great love for him. As I love him too, I have tried to please, or at least not to displease, his daughter; not to cross her wishes, her ideas; not to seem to her officious, presuming. Yet at the same time remember that I love him probably as much as you do. But now that you have asked me, now that I know you wish me to speak, I will say that if you could remove all necessity for the effort your father now makes, by placing yourself so fully upon a lower plane--if I may so express it--that his former self should not be suggested to him by anything in _you_, in your words, looks, or manner, you would soon find, I think, that this slight--slight constraint you have noticed was at an end. In addition, he himself would be more comfortable. And our dearest wish is of course to make him happy and comfortable, to keep him so." As she uttered these sentences quietly, guardedly, Sara had grown very pale. Her eyes, large and dark with pain, were searching her step-mother's fair little face. But Madam Carroll's gaze was fixed upon the window opposite; not until she had brought all her words to a close did she let it drop upon her daughter. Then the two women looked at each other. The girl's eyes asked a mute question, a question which the wife's eyes, seeing that it was an appeal to her closer knowledge, at length answered--answered bravely and clearly, sympathetically, too, and with tenderness, but--in the affirmative. Then the daughter bowed her head, her face hidden in her hands.