TO do Colonel Kingsward justice, he was taken entirely by surprise by Bee’s outburst. He had no remembrance of the name. The name had been wholly unimportant to him even at the time when it had come under his notice. The previous claimant to Aubrey Leigh’s affections had been “the woman,” no more, to his consciousness. He did not remember anything about the business now, except that there was a story about a woman, and that he would not permit his young daughter to marry a man concerning whom such a story existed. Even after Bee had left him, when he really made an effort to pursue into the recesses of his mind anything that was connected with that name, he could not make it out. Was it perhaps a tyrannical governess? but that would not explain the girl’s vehement outcry. He had not thought for a long time of Bee’s interrupted love, and broken-off engagement. Of what consequence is such an episode to so young a girl? And there were other matters in his mind of what seemed a great deal more importance. Whatever was the source of Bee’s previous knowledge of Miss Lance, she hated that singularly attractive woman, as it is usual for the sex--Colonel Kingsward thought--to hate instinctively every other woman who is endowed with unusual attractions. What a magnificent creature that woman was! How finely she had talked of the undeveloped boy to whom she had hoped to be of service, and with what genuine feeling, half-abashed, distressed, yet not without a gleam of amusement, she had told him of the wonderful scene at the end, when Charlie had asked her to marry him. “Me! A woman who might be his mother!” she had said, with beautiful candour; though it was not candour, it was more like jest, seeing that she was still young--young enough to turn any man’s head. And she had added hastily, “It must have been my fault. Somehow I must have led him astray, though I was so far from intending it. A boy like your son would not have done such a wild thing had he not supposed----” She put up her hands to her face to hide a blush. “That is the worst of us, poor women,” she had said, “we cannot show an interest even in a boy but he supposes--oh, Colonel Kingsward, can’t you imagine what I felt, wishing solely to be of use to your son, who is such a good, ingenuous, _nice_ boy--and finding in a moment, without the least warning, that he had mistaken me like _that_!” Colonel Kingsward was of opinion, and so was everybody who knew him, that he was by no means an impressionable man; but it would be impossible to say how touched he had been by that explanation. And she was so sorry for Charlie. She avowed that, after what had happened, she would have considered herself inexcusable if she had not come to his father, however unpleasant it might be to herself, to show him how little, how very little, Charlie was to blame.