“Yes, I know that. How handsome he was, how frank and pleasant looking, and how your daughter adored him. They were a beautiful couple.” Her wan cheeks flushed, and her eyes kindled as she spoke, as if with a genuine enthusiasm. “They were, and they adored each other. It will break my daughter’s heart. You have known trouble—about a daughter. I think you can understand what I feel for my girl.” “I do—I do! Yes, I know what you must feel—what she must feel in her desolation, with all she valued gone from her for ever. But she has not to drink the cup that _my_ girl must drink, Lord Cheriton. _She_ has not fallen. _She_ is not a thing for men to trample under foot, and women to shrink away from.” “Forgive me,” said Lord Cheriton, in a softened voice. “I ought not to have spoken of—Mercy.” “You ought never to speak of her—to me. I suppose you thought the wound was so old that it might be touched with impunity, but you were wrong. That wound will never heal.” “I am sure you know that I have always been deeply sorry for you—for that great affliction,” said Lord Cheriton gently. “Sorry, yes, I suppose you were sorry. You would have been sorry if a footman had knocked down one of your Sèvres vases and smashed it. One is sorry for anything that can’t be replaced.” “That is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, Mrs. Porter,” said Lord Cheriton, drawing himself up suddenly with an air of wounded dignity. “You can tell me nothing about our trouble, I see; and I am not in the mood to talk of any older grief. Good night.” He lifted his hat with grave respect and walked back to the park gate, vanishing slowly from those grey eyes which followed him in eager watchfulness. “Is he really sorry?” she asked herself. “Can such a man as that be sorry for any one, even his own flesh and blood? He has prospered; all things have gone well with him. Can he be sorry? It is a check, perhaps; a check to his ambitious hopes. It baulks him in his longing to found a family. He looks pale and worn, as if he had suffered: and at his age, after a prosperous life, it must be hard to suffer.” So mused the woman who had seen better days—embittered doubtless by her own decadence—embittered still more by her daughter’s fall. It was nearly ten years since the daughter had eloped with a middle-aged Colonel in a cavalry regiment, a visitor at the Chase—a man of fortune and high family, with about as diabolical a reputation as a man could enjoy and yet hold Her Majesty’s commission.