“We will talk of that after I have come back from Paris,” he said kindly. “For your own sake I don’t advise any sudden step. And there is Lady Violet to consider. As I said before, you have acted as her champion. Anything like a public slur on you, or an admission on your part that you were to blame, would be certain to give her pain, even if it didn’t reflect on her. She spoke of you to me this morning in a very friendly way.” Poor Violet. So she had done the very worst thing she could have done in my interest. To praise a young man to an elderly admirer--what other result could it have but to ensure his being driven from the field? I was too much cast down to make any response to Sir Frank’s well-meant advice, beyond a silent bow. He was as friendly as ever the next minute, invited me to come to Charing Cross to see him off, and shook my hand cordially at parting. I preferred to walk home afterwards, dreading the dull hours till bedtime. So miserable was I that, when I came in, I should have gone straight upstairs without looking to see if there were any letters for me if I had not been arrested by a faint fragrance that had many memories for me. I looked down, and there was a delicate blue envelope beckoning me by name. DEAR BERTRAND, I write at once to tell you that you have nothing to fear from dear Sir Frank. He spoke of you most highly to my father, said you had a distinguished career before you, and that he would not take £3,000 a year for your practice in a few years’ time. Yours, VIOLET. CHAPTER XVIII MOTHER AND DAUGHTER Sir Frank Tarleton had not given me all his reasons for not taking me with him to Paris. One of them, as he told me afterwards, was that I had made an enemy of Sarah Neobard, or, to put it the other way, I had made her regard me as an enemy. My chief believed that my presence would prevent him from obtaining any information from her or her mother. They would think he had come on a hostile errand, and they would obstinately hold their tongues, for fear lest anything they said might be used by me against her. Tarleton’s intention was to appear in the character of a friend of Sarah’s, who did not share my suspicions and only wanted to be able to clear her from them. He was quite frank with me about the way in which he had spoken of me in my absence, and about everything else in which I was interested.