No sooner were they within the house door than the parlour-maid began, 'That man has been here again, ma'am.' 'What, Jones?' said Bertha, in evident annoyance. 'Yes, ma'am, and I am sorry to say he saw little Cea. The child had run down after me when I answered the door, and he asked her if she did not know her own father, and if she would come with him. "No," she says, "I'm Miss Morton's," and he broke out with his ugly laugh, and says he, "You be, be you, you unnatural little vagabond?"--those were his very words, ma'am--"but a father is a father, and if he gives up his rights he must know the reason why." He wanted me, the good-for-nothing, to give him half a sovereign at once, or he would take off the child on the spot, but, by good luck, she had been frightened and run away, the dear, and I had got the door between me and him, so I told him to be off till you came home, or I would call for the police. So he was off for that time.' 'Quite right, Alice,' said Miss Morton, and then, leading the way upstairs and throwing herself down on a chair, she exclaimed, 'There, it ought to be a triumph to you, Northmoor! You told me that I should have trouble about poor little Cea's father, the brute!' 'Is he levying blackmail on you?' 'Yes. It is horribly weak of me, I know, and I can scarcely believe it of myself, but one can't abandon a child to a wretch like that, and he has the law on his side.' 'Are you quite sure of that? He deserted her, I think you said. If you could establish that, or prove a conviction against him--' 'Oh, I know she might be sent to an industrial school if I took it before a magistrate, but if the other alternative would be destruction, that would be misery to her. See--' and there was a little tap at the door. 'Come in, Cea. There, make your curtsey to his lordship.' A pretty little fair-haired pale-cheeked girl, daintily but simply dressed, came in and made her curtsey very prettily, and replied nicely to Lord Northmoor's good-natured greeting and information that Michael had sent her a basket of primroses and a cowslip ball, which she would find in the hall. 'What do you say, Cea?' said Bertha, anxious to demonstrate her manners. 'Thank you, my lord, and Master Michael,' she uttered, but she was evidently preoccupied with what she had to tell Miss Morton. 'Oh'm, there was such a nasty man here! And he wanted me, and said he was my father, but he wasn't. He was the same man that gave Master Mite and me the bull's-eyes when we were naughty and Louisa went away.' 'Are you sure, Cea?' both exclaimed, but to the child of six the very eagerness of the question brought a certain confusion, and though more gently Lord Northmoor asked her to describe him, she could not do it, and indeed she had been only five when the encounter had taken place. The urgency of the inquiry somehow seemed to dispose her to cry, as if she thought she had been naughty, and she had to be dismissed to the cowslip ball.