'Oh no! she never mentions him. She does not know. No one does; but I am quite sure he died nobly, with no one to tell the tale, only the angels to look on, and that makes it all the finer. Or just suppose he was on a desert island all the time, and came back again to find us! I sometimes think he is.' 'What? When you are _quite sure_ of the other theory?' 'I mean I am quite sure while I am thinking about it, or reading Robinson Crusoe, or the Swiss Family.' 'Oh!' 'Miss Mary, has no one ever told you anything about my father?' 'No one.' 'They never tell me. Mother cries, and aunt Ursula puts on her "there's-an-end-of-it look." Do you think there is anything they are waiting to tell me till I am older?' 'If there were, I am sure you had better not try to find it out beforehand.' 'You don't think I would do anything of _that sort?_ But I thought you might know. Do you remember their first settling here?' 'Scarcely. I was a very small child then.' Miss Nugent had a few vague recollections which she did not think it expedient to mention. A dim remembrance rose before her of mysterious whisperings about that beautiful young widow, and that it had been said that the rector of the Old Church had declared himself to know the ladies well, and had heartily recommended them. She thought it wiser only to speak of having been one of their first scholars, telling of the awe Miss Headworth inspired; but the pleasure it was to bring a lesson to pretty Mrs. Egremont, who always rewarded a good one with a kiss, 'and she was so nice to kiss--yes, and is.' 'Aunt Ursel and mother both were governesses,' continued the girl, 'and yet they don't want me to go out. They had rather I was a teacher at the High School.' 'They don't want to trust their Little Bear out in the world.' 'I think it is more than that,' said the girl. 'I can't help thinking that he--my father--must have been some one rather grand, with such a beautiful name as Alwyn Piercefield Egremont. Yes; I know it was that, for I saw my baptismal certificate when I stood for the scholarship; it was Dieppe,--Ursula Alice, daughter of Alwyn Piercefield and Alice Elizabeth Egremont, May 15, 1860. James Everett--I think he was the chaplain at Dieppe.' Mary Nugent thought it the wisest way to laugh and say: 'You, of all people in the world, to want to make out a connection with the aristocracy!' 'True love is different,' said Ursula. 'He must have been cast off by his family for her sake, and have chosen poverty-- "To make the croon a pund, my Alwyn gaed to sea, And the croon and the pund, they were baith for me."' Miss Mary did not think a yacht a likely place for the conversion of a croon into a pound, and the utter silence of mother and aunt did not seem to her satisfactory; but she feared either to damp the youthful enthusiasm for the lost father, or to foster curiosity that might lead to some painful discovery, so she took refuge in an inarticulate sound.