"Your papa would do well to scold you also," flashed Mrs. Lyle. "After all your father's goodness to you, and your pretense of loving him so well, to think that you would throw away your chance of helping him in his old age. I have no patience with such folly!" "Papa, _you_ are not angry with me, are you?" asked his daughter, turning her soft, beseeching eyes, now swimming in tears, upon his kind yet troubled face. "I could not marry Captain Ernscliffe, papa, because I do not love him." "Love," sneered Mrs. Lyle, scornfully. "Love is the last thing to be considered nowadays!" Papa drew the tearful pleader down by his side on the lounge, and smoothed away the disheveled golden ringlets from the flushed little face. "No, dear, I am not angry with you," he said. "It is true that my business affairs are tottering on the verge of failure, and if you had accepted the captain he might have helped me to tide over the crisis, but I would not have you sacrifice yourself, my pet, for I would be loth to part from you even if you went willingly and happily to another home. But let us hope for the best. Now that your Uncle Rob is about to take my expensive family off my hands for a year, I may be able to save some money and get straight again." * * * * * Three days later Mrs. Lyle and her three fair and charming daughters stood on the deck of the _Europa_ bound for their long and anxiously anticipated continental tour. CHAPTER V. "How I miss them all," Mr. Lyle said to himself often and often in the long year while his family were absent, and he went home every night to his solitary supper and lonely newspaper. "I would give anything to see my little Queenie, or even to get a letter from her. Strange that she does not write to me. And mamma, too, in her brief letters never says a word about Queenie, though she must know that I want to hear something about my little one. She always says that the girls are well and enjoying themselves, but she never goes into particulars." It was quite true. The Lyles were traveling from place to place, and Mrs. Lyle, never fond of writing, always dropped the briefest of notes to her husband, and invariably informed him that he need not reply, for they were constantly on the wing and could not tell him where to direct his letter so that it would reach them. She spoke of the girls casually, never naming them in particular save once in her first letter when she said that "Robert was much disappointed, and even vexed at Queenie's defection." Mr. Lyle puzzled a great deal over those words at first, and at last concluded that Mrs. Lyle referred to Queenie's rejection of Captain Ernscliffe. Robert Lyle was a younger brother of Mr. Lyle, and had inherited a large fortune from a deceased uncle. He was an invalid, and spent most of his time abroad from whence many fine presents found their way to his elder brother's family in America.