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there was only a few years between them. I am certain it was by Neville's wish that Richard became your guardian." He laughed, in some embarrassment. "He couldn't exactly foresee that another member of the family would want to cut in. I love you--I adore you! Let's give all these people the slip. Hester, my pretty, pretty darling--look at me! I'll show you what life means--what love means!"
And doubly tempted by her abasement, her bewildered pain, he tried again to take her in his arms.
But she held him at arm's length.
"If," she said, with pale lips--"if Sir Neville was my father--and Aunt Alsie"--her voice failed her--"were they--were they never married?"
He slowly and reluctantly shook his head.
"Then I'm--I'm--oh! but that's monstrous--that's absurd! I don't believe it!"
She sprang to her feet. Then, as she stood confronting his silence, the whole episode of that bygone September afternoon--the miniature--Aunt Alice's silence and tears--rushed back on memory. She trembled, and the iron entered into her soul.
"Let's go back to the station," she said, resolutely. "It's time."
They walked back through the forest paths, for some time without speaking, she refusing his aid. And all the time swiftly, inexorably, memory and inference were at work, dragging to light the deposit--obscure, or troubling, or contradictory--left in her by the facts and feelings of her childhood and youth.
She had told him with emphasis at luncheon that he was not to be allowed to accompany her home; that she would go back to Paris by herself. But when, at the St. Germains station, Meryon jumped into the empty railway carriage beside her, she said nothing to prevent him. She sat in the darkest corner of the carriage, her arms hanging beside her, her eyes fixed on objects of which she saw nothing. Her pride in herself, her ideal of herself, which is to every young creature like the protective sheath to the flower, was stricken to the core. She thought of Sarah and Lulu, whom she