"What a pity you have no daughter! A place like this looks as if it wanted a daughter. But you and I are in the same desolate condition. Allan is all I have--and my white farm." "Mother, why not my white farm and Allan?" said her son laughingly. "If you knew more of my mother, Mrs. Wornock, if you knew her in Suffolk, you would be very likely to think the farm first and not second in her dear love. Perhaps you, too, are interested in farming." Mrs. Wornock smiled a gentle negative, and gave a glance at the triple keyboard yonder, which was eloquent of meaning. A glance which seemed to ask, "Who could waste time upon cowhouse and poultry-yard when all the master-spirits of harmony are offering their mysteries to the faithful student?" * * * * * "Well, mother, how do you like the mistress of Discombe?" asked Allan, as they drove homeward. "She is very refined--rather graceful--dreadfully shy," answered his mother, musingly; "and I hope you won't be angry with me, Allan, if I add that she seems to me half an idiot." "You saw her to-day at a disadvantage," said Allan, and then lapsed into meditative silence. Had he not also seen this strange woman at a disadvantage when she fainted at the mention of his father's name--the name his father had borne in youth, not the name by which he was known now? Her fainting-fit might have had no significance in his eyes if it had not followed upon her eager questioning about his father. And whatever suspicions had been excited by that first visit were intensified by Mrs. Wornock's manner in the presence of Lady Emily. Such obvious embarrassment--a shyness so much more marked than that with which she had received him on his first visit--could hardly exist without a deeper cause than solitary habits or nervous temperament. The likeness between Geoffrey Wornock and himself might have meant no more than the likeness between Mr. Drummond and Sir Robert Peel; but that likeness, taken in conjunction with Mrs. Wornock's extraordinary interest in his father, and most noticeable embarrassment in receiving his mother, might mean a great deal--might mean, indeed, that the cloud upon his father's life was the shadow of a lifelong remorse, the dark memory of sin and sorrow. It might be that within the years preceding his marriage George Beresford had been involved in a guilty intrigue with Mr. Wornock's young wife. To believe this was to think very badly of this gentle creature, who used the advantages of wealth and position with such modest restraint, whose only delight in life was in one of the most exalted of life's pleasures. To believe this was to think Mrs. Wornock a false and ungrateful wife to a generous husband; and it was to believe George Beresford a vulgar seducer.