‘You know now, Mary, why I look at the girl so anxiously. She’s not like her mother; not much like her in face, and I can’t think she’s like her in heart. But you know what her faults are as well as I do. Whether I’ve been right or wrong in giving her a good education, I shall never know. Wrong, I fear--but I’ve told you all about that.’ ‘You don’t know whether she’s alive or not?’ asked Mary, when once more it was left to her to break silence. ‘What do I care? How should I know?’ ‘Don’t be tempted to tell them--either of them!’ said the other earnestly. ‘My friend Barmby knows. Whether he’s told his son, I can’t say; it’s twenty years since we spoke about it. If he _did_ ever mention it to Samuel, then it might somehow get known to Horace or the girl, when I’m gone.--I won’t give up the hope that young Barmby may be her husband. She’ll have time to think about it. But if ever she should come to you and ask questions--I mean, if she’s been told what happened--you’ll set me right in her eyes? You’ll tell her what I’ve told you?’ ‘I hope it may never--’ ‘So do I,’ Stephen interrupted, his voice husky with fatigue. ‘But I count on you to make my girl think rightly of me, if ever there’s occasion. I count on you. When I’m dead, I won’t have her think that I was to blame for her mother’s ill-doing. That’s why I’ve told you. You believe me, don’t you?’ And Mary, lifting her eyes, met his look of appeal with more than a friend’s confidence. CHAPTER 2 From chambers in Staple Inn, Lionel Tarrant looked forth upon the laborious world with a dainty enjoyment of his own limitless leisure. The old gables fronting upon Holborn pleased his fancy; he liked to pass under the time-worn archway, and so, at a step, estrange himself from commercial tumult,--to be in the midst of modern life, yet breathe an atmosphere of ancient repose. He belonged to an informal club of young men who called themselves, facetiously, the Hodiernals. _Vixi hodie_! The motto, suggested by some one or other after a fifth tumbler of whisky punch, might bear more than a single interpretation. Harvey Munden, the one member of this genial brotherhood who lived by the sweat of his brow, proposed as a more suitable title, Les Faineants; that, however, was judged pedantic, not to say offensive. For these sons of the Day would not confess to indolence; each deemed himself, after his own fashion, a pioneer in art, letters, civilisation. They had money of their own, or were supported by some one who could afford that privilege; most of them had, ostensibly, some profession in view; for the present, they contented themselves with living, and the weaker brethren read in their hodiernity an obligation to be ‘up to date.’