“Ah, but this is different. (Papa, I am certain that woman is following us.) This is quite different. It is an _old_ friend, whom none of us ever heard of. If we had known even his name we should not have been afraid. But do not be frightened, he is very nice. We all like him. He says he knew you in the West Indies, and the thing that alarmed us was that none of us, not even mamma, ever knew you had been there at all.” “The West Indies!” Was it possible that Sir William started so much as to shake the pony carriage in which he sat? A cloud came suddenly over his serene countenance. He did not say, as Alice fancied he would, “I know nothing about the West Indies.” On the contrary, he paused, cleared his throat, and asked in a curiously restrained, yet agitated voice, “What does he--call himself?--what is his name?” Alice was half alarmed by the effect she had produced. She did not understand it. She wanted to soften and do away with any disagreeable impression. “Oh, he is very nice,” she said. “It is not any one you will mind, papa. And he is all right; he is in the _Army List_; we looked him up at once; we took every precaution; and there he was, just as he said, J. St. John Lenny, 50th West India Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel. After that, of course, and when he said he had known you so well, we could not hesitate any more.” “Lenny!” Sir William said. It was with a tone of relief. He drew a long breath “as if he had expected something much worse,” Alice said afterwards. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. To be sure it was a warm evening. But there was something very strange to the girl in her father’s agitation. She did not understand it--he who was always so calm, who never allowed anything to put him out. “Then were you really in the West Indies, papa?” “I was in a great many places in my youth,” he said. “I was not taken care of as my boys have been. I was the youngest, and I did pretty much as I liked--a bad thing,” he added, after a pause; “a very bad thing, though you children never understand it. It led me into places and among people whose very names I seem to have forgotten now.”