Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched no prettier neck than hers, and he declared, as the child grew, that her "points" would be best displayed could she go about in the largest and shadiest hat and the most closely fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the way, he had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire; but the child was packed off occasionally, to be rid of her, to Mallard Bois, Lord Moone's seat, there to romp with her cousin, Eric Scarisbrick, already preparing for Eton, and such small fry as climbed trees and cheeked the gardeners with him. Here she revelled in the liberty that was denied her at home; and perhaps she already realised instinctively that her mother's relief at having her out of the way was tempered only by the invalid's resentment that the child could be happy out of her own not very cheerful company. Be that as it may, the girl was told, at twelve years of age, that she was getting too big to kick these limbs her stepfather so admired about among growing boys. She was given half-long skirts and French and English governesses: the French one, though she did not yet know it, as a preparation for sending her to a Paris convent. At fourteen years of age she had not heard of the man whose grey eyes and perfect shapeliness of body she inherited. The Scarisbricks, be sure, had allowed that episode to be hushed up. But the day was bound to come when she should hear of the Honourable Mrs. Causton and identify that lady with her mother. The day did come, no matter how; and, inwardly trembling but outwardly resolved, she sought her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger had just come with a cry out of a doze. Her daughter demanded to be told who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was. She was told that there was no such person. "Then who was she?" the girl demanded. There were few of her questions to her mother that were not demands. "Who's been telling you about her?" That did not seem to Louie to matter. She repeated the question. "She was a very great fool," Mrs. Chaffinger snapped. "Why aren't you with Mademoiselle?" "Who was she besides being a very great fool?" the child persisted. It had to come out. "Then papa _isn't_ my father?" Louie said, pale. All through her life she was pale in her moments of stress. "I'm your mother, and I tell you to go to your French lesson at once." But Louie did not move. "Then who was my father?" she asked. "Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?" "Is?... Then he isn't dead?" Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips. "I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in good time" (her daughter looked coldly unbelieving), "but since you are here I'll tell you now. Sit down on that chair and stop fidgeting----" And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the divorcing of Buck. The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not only her mother, but her father also. Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff." He liked it.