"This morning your father came very early into the study and found a sheet of carbon paper on my desk and two copies of one page of the work I was doing. As a matter of fact I had never used it before, but I wanted to try it for practice. There was no harm in it--I should have destroyed the second sheet in a minute or two, and in any case it was so badly done that it was absolutely worthless. But directly Lord Deringham saw it he went quite white, and I thought he was going to have a fit. I can't tell you all he said. He was brutal. The end of it was that my boxes were all turned out and my desk and everything belonging to me searched as though I were a house-maid suspected of theft, and all the time I was kept locked up. When they had finished, I was told to put my hat on and go. I--I had nowhere to go to, for Muriel--you remember I told you about my sister--went to America last week. I hadn't the least idea what to do--and so--I--you were the only person who had ever been kind to me," she concluded, suddenly leaning over towards him, a little sob in her throat, and her eyes swimming with tears. There are certain situations in life when an honest man is at an obvious disadvantage. Wolfenden felt awkward and desperately ill at ease. He evaded the embrace which her movement and eyes had palpably invited, and compromised matters by taking her hands and holding them tightly in his. Even then he felt far from comfortable. "But my mother," he exclaimed. "Lady Deringham surely took your part?" She shook her head vigorously. "Lady Deringham did nothing of the sort," she replied. "Do you remember last time when you were down you took me for a walk once or twice and you talked to me in the evenings, and--but perhaps you have forgotten. Have you?" She was looking at him so eagerly that there was only one answer possible for him. He hastened to make it. There was a certain lack of enthusiasm in his avowal, however, which brought a look of reproach into her face. She sighed and looked away into the fire. "Well," she continued, "Lady Deringham has never been the same since then to me. It didn't matter while you were there, but after you left it was very wretched. I wrote to you, but you never answered my letter." He was very well aware of it. He had never asked her to write, and her note had seemed to him a trifle too ingenuous. He had never meant to answer it. "I so seldom write letters," he said. "I thought, too, that it must have been your fancy. My mother is generally considered a very good-hearted woman." She laughed bitterly.