"You have stood by your father, my dear; and one good turn deserves another. I'd have been most infernally sick if I'd forgotten that dinner. It gave me the very chance of saying a word or two in season I'd been longing for. I only hope it will do the old fogies good." He took up the paper and glanced again at the report. "'Remarkable speech,' they call it," he continued complacently. "Well, they are not very far wrong. It _was_ a remarkable speech. Eh, Jean?" The good gentleman seemed unable to obtain his daughter's approval often enough. The fact was he had been a trifle disappointed with the attitude of some of his old friends last night. There was no doubt about it, he must go to the young folks for the meed of sympathy he deserved. Jean again looked out of the window, but she ceased to pay much attention to the backward-drifting landscape. Her heart was too full of hopes and questionings and restless wonder. In a little she turned to her father again and said, with an eye so candid and a smile so kind that many members even of her own sex would never have suspected a hint of ulterior design-- "Do you know, you are the very best of fathers!" He replied in the same spirit of affection, and she continued-- "I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to being in London again! You couldn't have done anything I'd have liked better." "Yes," he confessed, "London is an amusing place." "And one always meets so many people one knows there. That is one of its attractions." He agreed that it was. "I wonder who I'll meet this time?" She spoke with an air of the most innocent speculation, but the nature of her parent's smile changed subtly. "Goodness knows who one will meet in London," he replied. "Not Andrew, we'll hope, eh? I wonder where he is now." At this change of subject her breast gave a quick little heave that might have marked a stifled sigh, but she dutifully joined in what she could not but think an unnecessarily prolonged series of speculations regarding the movements of a quite uninteresting young man.