For the child was not old enough to know that it was wrong to dislike her father, while he was quite old enough to know that it was wrong not to be fonder of his child. “But you will get your own feet wet, my dear child,” said he, in quite a different tone. “Come up here and sit by the fire, while I fetch your goloshes. You have never seen my studio. I pass half my time painting and smoking here when it is wet and I can’t get out.” He had a palette on his thumb and a pipe in his mouth while he spoke. “You don’t mind the smell of turpentine or tobacco, do you?” “Oh, no, Mr. Rayner! But I won’t come in, thank you. I am at lessons with Haidee,” said I. “Happy Haidee! I wish I were young enough to take lessons; and yet, if I were, I shouldn’t be old enough to make the best use of my time,” said he, in a low voice, with mock-modesty that made me laugh. He was leaning a long way out of window in the rain, and I had work to do indoors; so, without saying anything more, I returned to the house with my prize. It was to his studio then that Sarah had taken his violin. I had never heard of this studio before; but I knew that Mr. Rayner was very careful about the condition of the stables, and I could imagine that this two-windowed upper room, with its fire, must be a very nice place to paint in--dry, warm, and light. Could this be where Mr. Rayner slept? No; for in that case he would hardly have asked me to come up and look at his painting. And I should not like to think that he had made for himself a snug warm little home here while his family slept in the damp vapors of the marsh at the bottom of the hill. But that would not be like Mr. Rayner, I thought, remembering the pains he had taken to provide a nice dry room just for me, the governess. Yet I should have liked, in the face of Mr. Reade’s tiresome suspicions, to be sure. That night I was so anxious to find out whether Mr. Rayner did really sleep out of the house, as he had been accused of doing, that I had the meanness to leave my own bedroom door wide open, as well as that at the bottom of the turret staircase, and listen for footsteps on the ground-floor, and the sound of a key in the garden door through which Sarah had taken the violin. But I heard nothing, though I was awake until long after the rest of the household must have gone to bed. And I felt almost as much relieved as if it had been my own father proved innocent of a mean action imputed to him.