"I might have told you so, Lizzie." "But it is true, isn't it, daddy?" "Yes, it is true." "Then I remember you once said that nobody in the world does anything without a motive." "Go on." "So I put this and that together. Mr. Sheldrake hasn't known you very long. What motive can he have in being so kind to you?" "He is my master, Lizzie." "That's no motive. So I think to myself, I wonder if it will last! You see, daddy, I am inquisitive, as all girls are, and I want to find out. And I mean to--for reasons." He laughs at this, and says that she is an inquisitive girl indeed. What makes her so inquisitive about Mr. Sheldrake when she has never seen him? "O, then you don't know!" she exclaims. "Don't know what, Lizzie? You talk in riddles." "Don't know that Mr. Sheldrake met me at a little distance from here yesterday, and went down with me to Hampton Court?" "Lizzie!" he exclaims in a tone of alarm, which sets Lizzie's sharp eyes at work studying his face, while the serious look on hers deepens in intensity. The thought which prompts his alarm is this: Is Mr. Sheldrake playing him false? He remembers, when Mr. Sheldrake proposed that he should turn over a new leaf, asking his master if he meant any harm to Lizzie. To that question Mr. Sheldrake had returned a scornful reply. But Lizzie's statement revives his suspicion. Her honour is as dear to him as a daughter's would have been. But how to warn her? Her high spirit would not permit of plain speaking; and besides, the subject is a delicate one, and the mere mention of it by him might be construed into a suspicion of Lizzie. She sees his trouble and perplexity, and divines the cause of it. "Don't be frightened, daddy," she says; "Mr. Sheldrake did not make love to me. _I_ am not his motive. A girl can soon tell, you know." "Tell me all about your meeting with him, Lizzie--how it came about." "He wrote me a note, telling me he wanted to give Some One--Alfred, you know--a pleasant surprise, and proposing that I should meet him and go down to Hampton Court with him. We were to keep the matter to ourselves, and I wasn't even to tell you. Well, I hesitated a little at first, thinking it wasn't quite right; but then I thought of the noble character you gave him, and I was curious to see him. And you mustn't think, daddy, that I can't take care of myself. So I told you what was the truth when I said I was going to Hampton Court to meet Some One, but I didn't tell you how it was to come about. You mustn't think ill, or have any suspicions, of Mr. Sheldrake because of what I say, for everything turned out exactly as he proposed. We went down to Hampton Court, and he left me and went for Alfred: and altogether it was one of the very happiest days I have ever spent." "I am glad of that, Lizzie. But this doesn't bring us any nearer to Mr. Sheldrake's motive."