She certainly had not grasped this fact. The notion of her being a widow seemed to her supremely funny. But for the sake of practice in the career of duplicity which he was marking out for her, she took out her handkerchief and averted her head. He put a strong arm about her, saying, “My poor child--my poor motherless child! I did not forget you when I was in the town just now. I called at Grindley’s and told them to send one of their hands out here with samples, so as to save you from the ordeal of appearing in public in your ordinary dress.” She moved away from his sheltering embrace. “Samples--samples--of what?” she said. “Of the cap--the--Ah! that I should live to see my child wearing widow’s weeds!” “You were very thoughtful, father,” she murmured; “but I am not sure that I should think of myself as really a widow.” “You are a widow,” he said, with some measure of asperity. She shook her head in a way that suggested she felt that she was not worthy of such an honour. “You are a widow, and I hope that you will remember that,” he repeated. “Your marriage was quite regular. There was no flaw in it.” “I suppose, then----” “You may not merely suppose, you may be sure of it. Do you fancy that there would be a flaw in any business, that I had to do with?” “I do not, indeed. This was, however, a bad bit of business for me, father. However, we need say no more about it. I don’t wish ever again to hear that wretched business alluded to. It has passed out of my life altogether, thanks be to God, and now it only remains in my mind as a horrid nightmare.” “It was a legal marriage, and marriage is a holy thing.” He spoke with the finality of the Vicar’s churchwarden--as if he were withstanding the onslaught of a professed freethinker. His last statement was, however, too much for the patience of his daughter--to be more exact, it was too much for her mask of humility which she had put on to save the trouble of discussion with him. She turned upon him, speaking with a definiteness and finality quite equal in force to his display of the same qualities. “Look here, father,” she said. “We may as well understand each other at once. You know as well as I do that there was nothing sacred about that marriage of mine. You know that the--the--no, I will not give him his true name, I will call him for once a man--he behaved like a man--_once_--you know, I say, that he married me simply because that foolish woman, Aunt Emily, gave him to understand that you would endow me handsomely on my wedding day, and he wanted the money to pay back all that he had embezzled. You also know that I never had the least feeling of affection, or even of regard, for the man--that I only agreed to marry him because my mother forced me to do so.” “Do not speak a word against your mother, girl.”