“Tom did not cry,” she exclaimed indignantly. “He did not think you could have the heart. And how could you have the heart? Your own son! I ask myself sometimes whether you have any heart at all.” “Ask away; you are at liberty to form your own opinion,” he said good-humouredly. “If that fellow had faced me as you do, now--but mind you, Winnie, if you go against me, I am not so partial to you but that I shall take means to have my own way. What I have, nobody in this world has any right to but myself. I have made it every penny, and I shall dispose of it as I please. If you think you will be able to do what you like with it after I am gone, you’re mistaken; take care--there are ways in which you can displease me now, as much as Tom has done. So you had better think a little of your own affairs.” She looked at him with startled eyes. “I don’t wish to displease you, papa--I don’t know”-- “Not what I mean perhaps? Remember that the sort of match which might be good enough for Winnie with two brothers over her head, might not be fit for Miss Chester of Bedloe. I don’t want to say any more.” This silenced Winifred, whatever it might mean. She said no more, but withdrew hastily, with a paleness and discomfiture which was little like the grief and indignation with which she entered the room. Her father looked after her with a chuckle. “That has settled her, I hope,” he said to himself. CHAPTER IV Miss Farrell came home next day from her visit. She was a little old lady of the period when people became old early, and assumed the dress and the habits of age before it was at all necessary. She was about sixty, but she had been distinctly an old lady for ten years. She wore a cap coming close round her face, and tied under her chin. Whenever she had the least excuse for doing so, she wore a shawl, an article the putting on of which she considered to afford one of many proofs whether or not the wearer was “a lady,” which was to Miss Farrell something more than a mere question of birth. She was very neat, very small, very light-hearted, seeing the best in everything. Even Mr. Chester, though she saw as little of him as possible, she was able to talk about as “your dear father” to her pupil; for, to be sure, whatever might be the opinion of other people, every father ought to be dear to his own child. Miss Farrell had gone on living at Bedloe since Winifred’s education was finished, for no particular reason,--at least, for no reason but love. She was a person full of prejudices in favour of aristocracy and against persons of low birth, but she was sufficiently natural to be quite inconsistent, and contradict herself whenever it pleased her--for, as a matter of fact, she preferred Winifred Chester, who was of no family at all, to several young ladies of the caste of Vere de Vere, whom she had formerly had under her care. How she had managed to “get on” with Mr. Chester was a problem to many people, and why she could choose to stay