I sat down, feeling just as though my feet were weighted with lead. I was trembling all over. Aunt Penelope looked at me fixedly; she had the best heart in the world, but the expression of her face was a little hard. Her eyes seemed to glitter now as they gazed into mine. "Aunt Penelope," I said, suddenly, "be prepared for one thing. Whatever you tell me, whatever you believe, and doubtless think you have good cause to believe, I shall never believe, never--if it means anything against my father." "Did I ask you to believe my story, Heather?" "No, but you expect me to, all the same," was my reply. "I expect you to listen, and not to behave like an idiot. Now sit perfectly still and let me begin." "It doesn't matter, if you don't expect me to believe," I said. "Hush! I am tired, I have been dangerously ill, and am not at all strong. I must get this thing over, or I'll take to worrying, and then I shall be bad again. Well, now, about your father. You understand, of course, that he left the army?" I nodded. "Oh, you take that piece of information very quietly." "He told me so himself," I said, after a pause. "Of course, I must believe what he tells me himself." "He told you himself? That's more than I expected Gordon Grayson to do. However, he has done so, and I don't think the worse of him, not by any means the worse, as far as that point is concerned. It hasn't occurred to you, I suppose, my poor little girl, to wonder why a man like your father is no longer in the army, to wonder why every army man will have nothing to do with him, to wonder why he married a woman like Lady Helen Dalrymple, and why she is received in society and he is not?" "How can you tell?" I asked, opening my lips in astonishment, "you weren't there to see." "A little bird told me," said Aunt Penelope. This was her usual fashion of explaining how certain information got to her ears: there was always a "little bird" in it; I knew that bird. I sat very still for a few minutes, then I said, as quietly and patiently as I could-- "Speak." "It happened," said Aunt Penelope, "in India, and it happened a long time ago--the beginning of it happened before you came to live with me, Heather. Of one thing, at least, I am glad--your poor, sweet mother, my precious sister, was out of it all. She believed in your father as you believe in him; she was spared the terrible knowledge of the other side of his character." "Oh, hush! don't say such things." "And don't you talk rubbish. Listen to the plain words of a plain old woman, a woman who, for aught you can tell, may be dying." "I am sure you are not, auntie; I have come back to help you to get well again."