"Thank you." "Do you play piquet or chess?" "Yes--but not well." "No doubt you will beat me--I am terribly rusty." "At any rate I shall try," she answered with a bright smile. "Who?" suddenly walking over to a picture, "is this handsome young man in racing colours?" "Do you not know?" he asked with an air of distressed surprise. "You!" she exclaimed, with an unflattering start. "Yes; that was taken after I won the Civil Service Cup, at Lucknow, on Good Fortune. Names go by contraries, for since that day my luck turned. I have been going steadily down the ladder ever since." "Oh, father," and she paused and turned and looked at him; "why do you say so? What do you mean?" "I've done those things which I ought not to have done, and not done those things which I ought to have done, and there's no health in me." She gazed into his eyes, laden with inexpressible remorse; then turned away to hide her own tears--and presently said, in a totally different voice: "Ah, I see," pointing to the bookcase, "you have all Sir Walter Scott, tattered and torn--how I love him!" "Is he your only love so far?" "Well," with an effort at gaiety, "I must confess I am very fond of Charles Lamb and Emerson and George Eliot." "So am I," cried her parent; "I see that we shall agree." "Above all I love William Thackeray." "Here," he laughed and said, "you have my consent; it is a family failing." "Oh, what a beautiful old place!" she exclaimed, as she paused before a little spotted landscape, in the midst of which stood a stately and picturesque mansion. "Yes, Charne Hall; I was born there." She moved in order to examine it still closer, thinking of the appalling contrast between her father's birthplace and his present abode. "It has been in our family since the reign of James I.; my cousin has it now. He married a woman of large fortune; they have no children." Verona turned and glanced at him. Her thoughts flew to Nicky. Was Nicky the heir to this ancestral English home? "It is a beautiful place," continued her father, gazing at the picture with eyes of deep affection; "it is the sort of mansion house agents cry up, with its saloon, suite of drawing-rooms, picture gallery, library, and forty or fifty bedrooms; but if it was only a little roadside cottage I should love it just as much. I am proud of being a Chandos of Charne. In all the ups and downs of my life I have remembered this fact, and kept the name spotless, to the best of my power. You can never guess, my dear, what sacrifices this has cost me, miserable and insignificant as I am. I have upheld our name. Were any one belonging to me to dishonour or disgrace it, it would kill me." He spoke with such vehemence and suppressed passion, that he seemed transformed.