‘Yes, I was a very miserable child that night. I wandered about for a long time, looking for my father in the crowd; sometimes following a figure that looked like his ever so far, only to find I had followed a stranger. I remember the shop-windows being shut one by one, and the streets growing dark and empty, and how at last I grew frightened, and sat down on a doorstep and began to cry. A policeman came across the street and looked at me, and shook me roughly by the arm, and then began to question me. I was quite disheartened by this time, and had given up all hope of finding my father: so I told him my name and where I lived, and he took me home, through a great many narrow streets and turnings and windings. I must have walked a long way, for I know I had crossed one of the bridges over the river. Everybody had gone to bed when the policeman knocked at the door in Bond-street. My flight had not been found out. My grandfather came down to open the door in his dressing-gown and slippers. He didn’t even scold me, he seemed too much surprised for that, when he saw me wet and muddy and footsore. He gave the man money, and carried me up to my little bedroom at the top of the house, and lighted a fire with his own hands, and did all he could to make me warm and comfortable. He asked me why I had gone out, and I told him. Then for the first time that I can remember, he took me in his arms and kissed me. “Poor Luce,” he said, “poor little orphan girl!” He was very kind to me for the next three days, and then took me down to Yorkshire to the school, where I stayed nearly ten years.’ ‘A strange sad story,’ said Lucius, deeply interested. ‘And have you never been told your father’s fate?’ ‘Only that he went to America, and that my grandfather has never heard of him from the hour in which they parted until now.’ ‘May he not have had some tidings, and kept the truth from you?’ ‘I don’t think he would tell me a direct falsehood; and he has most positively declared that he has received no letter from my father, and has heard nothing of him from any other source. He is dead, no doubt. I cannot think that he would quite forget the little girl who used to sit upon his knee.’ ‘You believe him to have been a good father then, in spite of your grandfather’s condemnation of him?’ ‘I believed that he loved me.’ ‘Have you no recollection of your mother?’ ‘No. She must have died when I was very young. I have seen her portrait. My grandfather keeps it hidden away in his desk, with old letters, and other relics of the past. I begged him once to give it to me, but he refused. “Better forget that you ever had a father or a mother,” he said, in his bitterest tone. But I have not forgotten my mother’s face, and its sweet thoughtful beauty.’