"No, dear, it was I who gave them up. By the bye, Waveney, I wonder why they left Kitlands?" and as the girl shook her head, he continued, thoughtfully, "It was a big place, and perhaps they did not care to keep it up after their mother's death; they always wanted to live nearer town. Well, have we finished our talk?" and then Waveney rose reluctantly. He had not told her much, she thought regretfully; but, all the same, her girlish intuition went very nearly the truth. There was something underneath; something that concerned Miss Althea. Why had her father looked so pained when she had mentioned the name? But with a delicacy that did her honour she was careful not to drop a hint of her suspicions to Mollie. Mr. Ward thought he had kept his secret well. He was impulsive and reckless by nature, but his care for his motherless girls was almost feminine in its tenderness. They were too precious for the rough workaday world, so he tried to hedge them in with all kind of sweet old obsolete fashions, for fear a breath should soil their crystalline purity. "Father would like to wrap us up in lavender, and put us under a glass case," Waveney would say, laughingly, and it must be owned that neither she nor Mollie were quite up to date. They did not talk slang; they were not _blasé_; and they had fresh, natural ideas on every subject, which they would express freely. Waveney was the most advanced; Mollie was still a simple child, in spite of her nineteen years. Mollie was very curious on the subject of her father's intimacy with the Harfords, but Waveney managed to satisfy her without making any fresh mysteries. "It is all in a nutshell, Mollie," she said, quietly. "When father was a young man he went to a lot of nice houses, and Kitlands was one of them. They were rich people and very gay, and gave grand parties, and he had quite a good time of it; and then he and mother married, and they were poor; and then, somehow, all their fine friends dropped off." "Oh, what a shame!" interrupted Mollie, indignantly. "Well, the Harfords did not drop him, but somehow he left off going there; and he has never even heard of them for twenty years. I think it upset him rather to have his old life brought up before him so suddenly; it made him feel the difference, don't you see!" and Waveney's voice was a little sad, she could so thoroughly enter into her father's feelings. What a change from the light-hearted young man of fashion, acting Orlando and making love to Rosalind in the green glades of Kitlands, to the shabby, drudging drawing-master, with shoulders already bowed with continual stooping.