“Oh yes, papa. I should like to have my big doll Marianna, that I put in my bed when we came away. Will she always be in my little bed all this time, staring with her big eyes? I forgot to shut her eyes when I put her in. Fancy a little girl lying for years and years with open eyes!” “It is not years and years, Janey.” “Yes, papa, it is longer, longer than any one can remember--far longer than _that_,” cried the child, stretching her arms to the widest. “I want to do home.” “Here is Helen coming to put you to bed,” he said. She was in his arms as she sat there, but he strained her closer, kissing her little upturned face again and again. “My little Janey, my little darling,” he said, “wherever you are you will not forget your poor father, who was so fond of you?” She did not take much notice of this address, being used, more or less, to speeches of the sort, but slid down from his knee. Helen had to postpone her explanation till the ceremony of putting the child to bed was over. Should she be obliged to wake her up again in the dark as had been done before? And how would it be possible here, thirty miles from the railway, to fly as they had done from Fareham? Janey chattered while Helen went over all those miserable calculations. It was almost dark when she went back to the room in which her father sat alone. “Have you not gone, Helen? I thought I heard the Précepteur asking for you at the door.” “I am not going, papa.” She came and sat down by him in the dark, which hid her countenance from him. She laid her hand softly upon his. “Papa, they have come.” “How you startle me, Helen!” he cried querulously. “Oh, I remember: the English visitors. Well! I hope you were discreet and did as I said?” “You were right,” she said, “and I was wrong. I thought it so unlikely; but don’t they say here that it is the unlikely things that happen? Papa, one of them is Charley Ashton, whom we met at Sainte-Barbe.” “Good Lord!” he cried, starting from his chair; then after a pause reseated himself. “I will keep out of the way,” he said. “I regretted afterwards that I left Sainte-Barbe when I did. Charley Ashton is not the sort of fellow to betray any one: and I think,” he said with a half laugh, “that he was very, very much struck with you. I should not wonder if that was why he has come back to this neighbourhood--although Sainte-Barbe is a good way from here.” These words scarcely conveyed any meaning to Helen’s ear. All she made out was that her father was not so much alarmed, not so thoroughly roused to think of his own welfare as he ought to be. “Papa, he got out of the carriage to talk to me. He spoke of you; he said I was to warn you, and that this would be enough: I was to tell you his cousin is with him, Sir John Harvey----”