“Just because of you. He has been so silly as to fall in love with you, and feeling that it would be dishonourable to me to continue to come here, this being the case, he has explained it all and withdrawn. There is now the short and the long of it, Rita. You have no right to say a word against poor Oliver. He has paid you, as people say, the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and he has acted in the most honourable way to me; feeling that he cannot be quite sure of not betraying himself if he continues to come, he has ceased to come. He would have left the place altogether if I had asked such a sacrifice of him. He has behaved in the most gentlemanly, honourable way. He tells me he did say something, but he did not know whether you understood it or not.” Rita was struck dumb. She sat and gazed at her father silently while he spoke, too curious and strongly interested even to be abashed by this strange news. She blushed no more. Having paid that one tribute of startled maidenliness to the new revelation, she was too much impressed and overwhelmed by it for any lighter feeling. She sat in an attitude of the most absorbed attention, her eyes fixed upon her father’s face, her lips a little apart, the breath coming quickly. She was astonished, yet not so much astonished as overawed, penetrated by the news. When her father ceased speaking, she continued the same rapt aspect of attention. He thought she would have been shame-faced, blushing, shy of it, unable to look him in the face; but he was not prepared for this curious, absorbed interest. By and by she repeated to herself softly, “So silly as to fall _in_--_love_:--with me--would have left the place altogether.” Then she made a pause, and, putting her hands softly together, said, with a sigh of satisfaction at having found out one problem: “Then that was what he meant!” “What was what he meant? He told me you took no notice; he thought you hadn’t understood what he said.” “I did not understand it,” said Rita, softly, “I only wondered. It was about going to England----” “Rita, Rita! you would not, for a new lover, a man you scarcely know, a being quite untried--you would not break my heart and go and risk your life--your life that is above all things precious to me?” Rita scarcely seemed to hear this interpolation--this interruption of her thoughts. “That there would be no danger, he said, and he would take care--he would take care--that was not much; but I did wonder. I will tell you the truth, papa. I had a great anxiety to know what he meant.” “Young idiot!” her father said, with hotly-rising wrath, “he meant nothing--nothing, my love! only a brag that he could do more, and know better--a boy, an uninstructed fool--than those who have watched over you all your life.”