There was a beautiful appeal upon her face, anxiety blending with a slight embarrassment. She had put aside the mask of light-heartedness, and that which it had all day been in her countenance to utter freely exposed itself. It was not so much as distress; rather, impatience of some besieging annoyance. She was more beautiful now than when Robert had read her face seventeen years ago. Still, he regarded her with his wonted smile. There was much kindness in his look; nothing more than kindness. “The best of friends, Isabel, I hope,” he replied to her. “I am going to ask you to do something for me,” she continued. “Will you sit down and listen to me? I am not sure that I do right in asking this favour of you, but you are the only one of my relatives whom I feel able to talk freely with, and I think I had rather you than any one else did this thing that I am going to ask. Perhaps you will find it too disagreeable; if so, tell me--you will promise to speak freely?” “Certainly, I promise.” They had taken their seats. Asquith rested one of his arms on a small table, and waited, the smile lingering. Isabel gathered the shawl about her, as if she felt cold. She was a trifle pale. “You understand perfectly,” she resumed, with a certain abruptness, which came of the effort it cost her to broach the subject, “the meaning of Ada Warren’s presence in this house?” “Perfectly, I think,” her cousin replied, with a slight motion of his eyebrows. “That is to say,” pursued Isabel, looking at the fringe of her shawl, “you know the details of Mr. Clarendon’s will?” He paused an instant before replying. “Precisely,” was his word, as he tapped the table. Isabel smiled, a smile different from that with which she was wont to charm. It was one almost of self-contempt, and full of bitter memories. “I had never heard of her,” she continued, “until I was called upon to take her as my own child. Then she was sent to me from people who had had the care of her since she was three years old.” Asquith slowly nodded, wrinkling his forehead. “Well, we will speak no more of that. What I wish to ask you to do for me is this:--Oh, I am ashamed to speak of it! It is something that I ought to have done myself already. But I am a coward; I have always been a coward. I can’t face the consequences of my own--my own baseness; that is the true word. Will you tell Ada Warren what her real position is, and what mine?” Asquith raised his head in astonishment. “She is still ignorant?” “I have every reason to believe so. I don’t think any one will have told her.” Robert bit his upper lip. “Has she never asked questions about her origin?” “Yes, but only once. I told her that her parents were friends of Mr. Clarendon, and that she was an orphan, therefore I had taken her. That was several years ago.” Again there was a pause in the dialogue. Isabel had difficulty in keeping her face raised; her cheeks had lost their pallor, the blood every now and then made them warm.