They breakfasted, almost gaily, making even John for a moment or two forget himself. And then when the meal was over the examination began. ‘Jack,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘it has been a great comfort to see you--though you wrote in such a solemn tone--looking fairly well upon the whole. Tell us, what made you do so, now?’ Elly sat down beside him, leaning against his chair. ‘Yes, tell us, Jack,’ she said. She was smiling, almost laughing, at his paleness, at his trouble, with not the faintest notion what it was, or indeed that it could be anything worthy, she would have said, of ‘the fright he had given them.’ Her attitude, her smile, the way in which she looked at him, so tender, so saucy, so frank, overwhelmed poor John. He got up hurriedly, leaving her astonished, deserted in the place she had taken, and confronted them both in an access of self-controlled, yet impatient misery, with his back to the wall. ‘I will tell you,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘if you insist upon it. I said so in my letter. It would have been kinder to let me go away, and take no notice. But if you insist I must explain.’ ‘Insist! Explain!’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘How is it possible not to insist when you speak as you have done. Did you expect us really to let you break off everything and disappear without a word?’ ‘Mrs. Egerton,’ said poor John, ‘you said there was no engagement to be allowed between Miss Spencer and me.’ Elly got up at this amazed, and went and stood by him, and touched his arm with her hand. ‘Oh, Jack!’ she said, with a reproach which went to his heart. ‘Well,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘that is true. I said I would not hear of it; but that is very different from suddenly breaking it off on the man’s side, without a word.’ ‘Oh, very, very different!’ cried Elly. ‘Aunt Mary, he never, never could intend to use me so.’ It was all a sort of sweet trifling to Elly, a sort of quarrel to be made up, though without any of the harshness of a quarrel--a little misunderstanding that could only end in one way. And he stood leaning up against the wall facing them, with his sad knowledge in his heart, knowing that it was no trifle that stood between them, but a great gulf which neither could cross. He stood and gazed at them for a moment, his eyes and his heart and every member of him thrilling with insupportable pain. ‘I will tell you if you wish it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to tell you, but if I must, I must. I told you that I always believed my father to be dead. He was nothing but a vision to me. I remember him only as a child does. I believed he was dead.’ ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Egerton, interested, but mildly, while Elly continued to look up, smiling into his face. ‘I remember, too,’ she said, ‘how he used to come in and take you out of bed.’