CHAPTER X.
YORKE IN LOVE
The great changes of our lives come suddenly. Swift as the lightning's flash is the revelation to Yorke that he loves the girl who sits beside him.
Half-unconsciously he had uttered the words which are still ringing in her ears, but he knows that his heart has been saying "dearest" all day long.
He knows now what that strange, peaceful happiness meant which made him feel as if he would be content to pass the rest of his life by her side in the hermit's cell.
And he knows that this is no transient passion which will have its day, and pass, leaving not a wreck behind, as so many passions alas! have passed with him. To every one of the sons of men, it is said, comes once in his life, the great all-absorbing love which wipes out all others, and which shall make of all his days an endless misery or a surpassing happiness; and this love has come to Yorke.
In an instant, as it were, it seems to have wrought a change in him. Gay, reckless, thoughtless, an hour ago, he is serious enough now.
His heart is beating quickly, furiously; his strong hands tremble as he holds the terrified horses, and urges them on with whip and voice; and yet, though apparently engrossed with them, thinking more of the silent girl beside him.
She is so silent! She scarcely seems to move, but sits, with the rug concealing her face, her head bent down.
"What have I said?" he asks himself; in truth he scarcely knows. It is as if his heart had suddenly become the master of his voice and actions, and had made a helpless slave of him.
If she would only speak! He longs past all description to hear her voice, even though it should be in anger and indignation; but she does not speak. He lifts his face to the sweeping rain and almost welcomes it. The storm is in harmony with the tempest of awakened passion which rages in his breast. He does not dare to speak to her, scarcely ventures to look her way, and he sits as silent as herself, while the horses dash along the streaming road and up the Portmaris street.
"We might have come by boat, there is water enough," says the duke, dryly. "Miss Lisle, I am afraid you are wet through. Pray get in at once, or you will catch cold."
She stands up on the box, and Yorke goes to unfasten the wrap, but she is too quick for him, and, taking out the hairpin, lets the rug fall, and stands before his eyes, her slim, graceful figure swayed a little away from him as if she did not want him to touch her.
He gets down, and offers her his hand, but she springs from the box lightly, stands a moment, then with a low-voiced "Good-night – and thank you," follows her father into the house.
The duke looks after her.
"The poor child is wet through and chilled," he says, sympathetically. "It's a pity you didn't think of a mackintosh, Yorke. What are you going to do with the rig and horses?"
Yorke looks down at him as if he scarcely heard or understood, for a moment; then he says, absently, like a man only half recovered from a stunning blow:
"The horses – oh, I'll find a place for them."
"You might take them to the station, your grace; they could put them up there in the good stable," suggests Grey.
"Yes, yes; and look sharp," says the duke. "We'll have some dinner by the time you are back. Will you have a glass of whisky and water before you go?"
But Yorke shakes his head almost impatiently.
"I'm all right," he says, curtly, and he drives off.
He sees the horses made comfortable in the stable at the station, and helps to rub them down and litter them; then he turns back.
But at the top of the street he pauses. He cannot face the duke just yet. There is that in his face, in his voice, he knows, which will reveal his secret.
He turns off to the right, and makes his way along a little used road toward the sea.
He is wet through, but he does not notice it; he scarcely knows where he is going until he stands on the edge of the sea.
"I love her!" he murmurs. "Yes, I love her. There is no woman in all the world like her! So good, so gentle, so beautiful."
He thinks of all the girls he has seen, talked with, danced with, and flirted with; but there is none like Leslie.
"I am a lost man if I do not get her!" he says to himself. "And how can I get her?" He groans, and pushes his hat off his brow, that is hot and burning. "She cares nothing for me; why should she? If I was to ask her to be my wife – my wife! How can I?" And he shudders as if some black thought had swept down upon him, and crushed the hope out of him. "How can I? Oh, what a mad, senseless fool I have been! How we chuck our lives away to find out, when it is too late, what it is we've lost. If I had met her a year ago – ." He breaks off, and sighs, as he tramps up and down in the rain. "If I could only wipe out that year! But I can't, I can't, though I'd give ten years of the life that's left in me to be able to do it! What would she think – say – if she knew, if I told her? With all her sweet, childlike ways, and all her innocence and purity, she is a woman, and the very goodness for which I love her would fight against me! She looked and spoke like an angel when she was telling me that story about the hermit. An angel! I'm a nice kind of man to fall in love with an angel, and want to marry her! I might as well fall in love with one of those stars." And he looks up despairingly at the diamond lights that are peering through the rift in the clouds.
"Besides," he mutters, "even if – if that other woman weren't in the question," and he sets his teeth, "how could I ask her to marry me? Even if she'd have me – and why should I dare to think that I could win her love? I'm a pauper and worse. And she thinks me a duke! That's another thing! I forgot that idiotic business! Oh, I've tied myself up in every way, and haven't a chance! And yet I love her – I love her! Leslie!" he repeats the name, as Romeo might have repeated Juliet's, finding a torturing joy in its music. "No, there's no hope! Yorke, my boy, you are badly hit. You've laughed at this kind of thing often enough, but your turn has come. And as there is no hope for you, you have got to bear it. The best thing you can do is to clear out in the morning, and blot Portmaris out of the map of England. I mustn't see her again – never again!"
All his nature protests against this resolve, and his heart aches badly, very badly; but he squares his shoulders and sets his teeth hard.
"Yes, that's the only thing to do; to cut and run. There's one comfort, she won't mind. She won't miss me. God knows what I said when I felt her face against my breast; but whatever it was, I've offended her past forgiveness. She wouldn't see me again, I dare say, if I stayed, and so – ." He heaves a sigh, which is very much like a groan, and turns homeward.
He finds Grey alone in the room when he enters; the dinner things are still on the table, and Grey looks at him with a rather grave and startled expression.
"I've saved some dinner, your grace," he says.
"'Your grace' be da – hanged!" says Yorke, almost fiercely.
"Yes, my lord," murmurs Grey. "The duke waited for over an hour, and he has gone to bed; I was afraid of a chill, my lord. And your lordship is wet, very wet, still – ."
"All right," says Yorke, as politely as he can. "Never mind. Go and see after the duke, and dinner – oh, yes. Thanks, you need not wait."
He tries to eat, but for once his faithful appetite fails him, and he pushes his plate away and gets his pipe, that great consoler in all times of trouble; and this is the worst trouble Yorke Auchester has ever had.
It is well on into the small hours when weary, but oppressed by a ghastly wakefulness, he goes to bed, and there he lies, open-eyed and thoughtful, until the sun floods the room.
He gets up, and as he looks in the glass after his bath, he smiles grimly.
"Only one night of it!" he says. "And a great many similar ones lie before me before I get over this! I wonder whether she has been thinking of me? Why should she? And if she should have been they wouldn't be pleasant thoughts."
He pulls the blinds aside and looks at the house opposite, wondering which is her window; and as he does so, the lover's heart-hunger for a sight of his loved one assails him.
It has still strong possession of him when he goes down the stairs and into the street; but he fights against it. The best thing he can do is not to see Leslie Lisle, but to drive Vinson's horses back to Northcliffe, and take the train from there to London, and – stop there; stop there till in a round of the folly which has suddenly grown so senseless and worthless in his eyes, he has dulled the pain of this, his first real love.
It is early, but Portmaris is alive and very much in evidence. The fishermen are out on the beach, the women are bustling about, the children are playing in the road-way. Some with a huge slice of bread and butter or treacle in their fists; breakfast is evidently a very movable feast with the entire population.
Yorke stands a moment and looks round with a pang of regret.
"I shall think of this place," he says. "Think of it too often to be comfortable. Why couldn't I have come here – and to her – a year ago? What's that song about 'the might have been'? That's how I feel this morning. Oh, lord!"
He strides on with his head drooping, in an attitude very unlike that of Yorke Auchester's usual one; and without the last night's opera song on his lips as is ordinarily the case; and he is near the station, when he hears the laughter of children ahead of him, and looking up, sees a group that make his heart leap, and the blood rush to his face.
Under a great oak in the pretty lane stands no other than Leslie herself, with a child upheld in her arms, and two others clinging to the skirts of her pretty, simple morning dress. The child borne aloft has pulled off her hat, and the sunlight as it comes through the trees, falls in flecks of light and shadow on her hair and upturned face. She is laughing the soft, sweet laugh, which, though he should live to be as old as the old man walking along on the other side of the road, Yorke will never forget, and – she does not see him.
Shall he turn and go back, go back and leave her forever? Better! But he cannot, simply cannot. So he goes on slowly, and it is not until he is close behind her that she hears him.
She turns, the child still held, crowing and struggling in her arms, and a startled look comes into her eyes, and the color flies to her face, and then leaves it pale.
Yorke lifts his hat.
"Good-morning," he says.
Her lips move, and her head bends over the child now lying in her arms, and staring with blue eyes up at the big man who dares to address "Miss Lethlie." Leslie's lips move; no doubt she says "good-morning," in response, though he cannot hear her.
"You are early this morning," he says, and he knows that his voice falters and sounds unnatural, as surely as he knows that his heart is beating like a steam-hammer, and that the longing to cry to her, "Leslie, I love you!" is almost irresistible.
"Yes," she says. "It is so beautiful after the rain – ."
She stops, for the word has recalled that homeward drive, the storm, his words – all that she has been thinking of through the long night.
"Yes," he says, vaguely, stupidly. Then he says, suddenly, "That child is too heavy for you – ."
"Oh, no; I often carry it," she falters, bending still lower over the pretty face enshrined in the yellow curls.
"But it is," he says. "Let me take it, if it must be carried."
"She would not let you," she says.
"We'll see," he rejoins, scarcely knowing what he is saying; and he holds out his arms.
The mite stares at him, turns and clutches Leslie for a moment, then, with the fickleness of its sex, swings round and holds out its arms to him.
Yorke laughs, and holds it up above his head.
"Now what shall I do with you?" he says, hurriedly. "Take you to London with me. No?" for the child struggles. "For that is where I am going." He puts the child down, and it toddles off with the other two. "Yes, I am going to London, Miss Lisle," he goes on, trying to speak lightly, carelessly.
"Yes?" she says, with downcast eyes, and she stoops to pick up her hat. As she does so, he stoops too; they get hold of it together, and their hands meet.
But for that sudden meeting, that touch of her hand, he could have gone, and the history of Leslie Lisle would have been a very different one; but it is the link which the Fates have been wanting to make their chain complete.
"Leslie!" he cries, scarcely above his breath. "Leslie!" And he takes both her hands and holds them fast, and looks into her eyes, the dark, gray eyes which she lifts to him with a swift fear – or is it a swift joy? mirrored in their clear depths.
"Let – me – go," she falters, with trembling lips.
"No!" he says, desperately. "Not till I have told you that I love you!"
CHAPTER XI.
AN IMPETUOUS AVOWAL
"I love you!"
Leslie draws her hands from his grasp, and stands with averted face, her bosom heaving, her breath coming with difficulty.
It is so sudden, so swift, this declaration, that she is overwhelmed. The heart of a pure-minded, innocent girl is not unlike a fortress. It withstands many an attack, and is able to repulse the besiegers until the one comes who cries "Surrender!" and at the sound of his voice, before some nameless magic in his presence, her strength goes, the gate is thrown wide open, and the conqueror marches in.
Leslie had been calm and self-possessed enough when Ralph Duncombe was pleading his passionate love, and was able to withstand his urgent prayer, but to Yorke she can find nothing to say; she can only stand with downcast eyes, her heart beating fast, and the gates beginning to open!
He takes her hand, but again she draws it from him, and sinking on to the trunk of a fallen tree, keeps her face, her eyes, from him.
"You are angry?" he says, his usually light and careless voice deep and earnest enough now. "Well, I deserve that. I – I ought not to have told you so suddenly. But – ," he leans against a tree close beside her, and looks down at her – "but – well, I couldn't help it. I was going away this morning." His heart gives a little quiver. "I was going away from Portmaris – and from you. I've been thinking of you all night, and I'd decided that that was the best thing to do. It's sudden and – and startling to you, Leslie – Miss Lisle – but it doesn't seem so to me. You see, I suppose I have been getting to love you ever since I saw you on the beach; that's not long ago, I dare say you'll say, but it seems a long time to me – months, ages."
It is almost as if her own heart were speaking, it is just as she has felt. She listens in a kind of amazement at the subtle sympathy between them.
"I have thought of nothing else but you since I saw you. I know that I shall be the happiest man in the world if – if you'll let me go on loving you, and try to love me a little in return, and the most wretched beggar in existence if – if you can't."
He waits a moment, for a strange sensation comes in his throat and stops his speech, usually so fluent and so free. Then, she still remaining silent, he goes on with the same grave, earnest tone, and with the same half-eager, half-hesitating tremor in his voice.
"I've never seen any one like you; I know plenty of women, but none like you, Leslie – I beg your pardon! You see, I always think of you as Leslie. If I were to try and tell you how I feel, I should make a mess of it. I can only say that I love you, I love you!"
With all his ignorance and lack of eloquence he is wise. "I love you," sums up all a woman wants or cares to hear.
"Of course," he goes on in a lower voice, daunted by her silence, her motionless, downcast face, her hidden eyes. "Of course, I can't expect, don't expect you to understand or – or to care for me even a little. You haven't known me long enough or – or – anything about me. All I want is a little hope. If you don't dislike me, right down dislike me, I'll be glad enough, and I'll try and get you to love me a little. You can't love me as I love you; that isn't to be thought of!"
"Is it not?" she thinks, but she says nothing.
Up above their heads a thrush is singing melodiously, and the liquid notes seem to say quite plainly, "I love you." The sun, as it shines between the leaves of the old oak, and touches Yorke's brave, and eager face, is surely smiling, "He loves you!" The stream rippling in a hollow behind them, as it runs laughing down to the sea, is as certainly murmuring, "Love, love, love!"
"You are angry and – and offended," he says, after a pause, during which she has been listening to this harmony of nature's voices. "Well, I deserve it! I ought to have waited until you knew more of me – but you see, as I said, I could not keep it. I had been thinking of you, dreaming of you, all night, and then I saw you suddenly, and I felt as if I must speak, happen what might. If I hadn't seen you, I dare say I could have found heart enough to clear out, and – and hold my tongue; but when I saw you with that little one in your arms, looking so beautiful and so good, just the Leslie I love so dearly, the words rushed out almost before I knew it – and – and – ," he squares his broad chest, and tilts his hat back with a gesture which, unlike most gestures, fits him like a glove, "there it is!"
She does not lift her face, does not open the lips that are trembling – if he could only see it; and he waits a moment before he says, sadly, with the lover's despairing note audible through an affected cheerfulness:
"I'm – I'm sorry that I've made a nuisance of myself, and – and worried you. Don't be upset and think anything of it. I ought not to have spoken. I couldn't help loving you, but I might have had the sense to hold my tongue, and taken myself off without distressing you. Don't – don't think any more of it. I'm not worthy of you, not worth a thought from such as you, and – well, I'll say good-by, Miss Lisle."
He puts his hat straight, and braces himself together, so to speak, for the parting; then he bends down and takes her hand, the hand that lies in the lap of the pretty morning frock like a white flower.
She does not draw it away now, and as he holds it, the passion which raises men to a level with the gods, takes possession of him.
"Leslie!" he says, almost hoarsely. "I can't let you go! I love you too much. Look at me, speak to me! Unless you hate me, I must stay and try and make you love me! I can't lose you! You are the only woman I have ever seen or known that I wanted badly! And I do want you! I can't live without you! I can't leave you, knowing that I may never see you again. I can't. Look up, Leslie – dearest – dearest! Tell me straight, once and for all – I will never come back to worry you – once and for all, will you try and love me?"
He takes her other hand – he has got both now, and lifts her, actually lifts her from the tree. She does not resist him, but lets her hands, trembling, remain willing prisoners, and when her face is on a level with his, she raises her eyes and looks at him.
There must be something in the dark gray eyes, something under the shadow of the black lashes, which contains a potent magic; for at sight of it his heart leaps and the blood rushes to his face, then leaves it pale with the intensity of a supreme emotion, an incredible joy, an amazed delight.
"Leslie!" breaks from him, "Leslie!"
Her eyes meet his, steadily, yet shyly, o'er-brimming with the secret which a maiden keeps, hugs closely, while she can. A secret which she is loth to part with, but which the loved one's eyes read so quickly.
"Leslie – do you – ah, dearest, dearest, you do love me!"
She tries to withstand him, to draw away from him, even now; but his passion is too much for her, and the next instant she is folded in his arms and her head lies on his breast.
Sing on happy thrush; but no music even your velvet throat can make shall compare with the music ringing through these two human hearts. A music which shall not die though these same hearts may be torn apart and wrung with anguish; a music which for joy or pain, weal or woe, shall echo through their lives till Death comes with its great silence.
But it is of life and love and joy, and not death or parting, that they are thinking now.
He draws her arm within his as if she had belonged to him for years, or rather as if he wanted to assure himself that she belonged to him, and they pace slowly along the meadow in the shadow of the trees; her hat swings on her hand, her eyes lift, heavy with love, to his face, as he bends down to her his own, eloquent with the devotion and adoration which fill his heart to overflowing. And yet through all the storm of passion that tosses in his breast, he has sense enough to notice how beautiful she is, how lightly and gracefully she walks by his side, how delicious is the pose of the slender neck, the half averted face. This flower that he has found and plucked to wear in his breast is no common weed, but a rare blossom of which an emperor might be proud.
And she – well, she scarcely realizes yet what this is that has happened to her; she only knows that a supreme happiness, a novel joy, so intense as to be almost pain, is thrilling through her; that at one moment she feels inclined to cry and the next to laugh. He is hers! She is to be his wife! – his wife! Oh, what a singular dream! Shall she wake soon? Wake to find that he has gone, and that all that is now happening is but a phantasy, a vision that will fade and leave her desolate.
She starts presently and looks up at him.
"Papa! He – will miss me – wonder where I have gone," she says. "How long have we been here?" and she looks round as if she expected to see the shades of night falling.
He laughs softly, the laugh of a man so completely happy that time has ceased to be of consequence.
"I don't know. What does it matter? Your father will know you are all right. He will think you have gone to the beach, that you are playing with the children – how fond you are of children, dearest."
"Yes, yes," she murmurs.
"I never saw any one go on with them as you do. No wonder they love you; but I suppose everything and every one does. By the way – ." He stops, and a faint shadow falls on his face. "I suppose there have been ever so many fellows who've been in love with you?"
She makes a little gesture of indifference, as if the thought was too trivial to be entertained or spoken of. What does it matter who loved her, now?
"That – that letter and the ring?" he says, inquiringly.
She raises her clear eyes to his.
"Do you want me to tell you about them?" she says, in a low voice, as if he had the right to search her soul, and she were wishing that he should do so.
"No, no," he rejoins.
"But I will. He – he who wrote the letter and gave me the ring – ."
His face grows cloudier.
"No, no tell me just this. He is nothing to you, you never cared – ."
"Never," she says simply. "He has gone – I will tell you."
He presses her face to his to silence her, and a wave of remorse, of self-reproach, sweeps over him.
"No, no, not a word. That is enough for me. You are mine now and always and forever."
"Forever!" she breathes.
"And – and," he hurries on. "I have no right to ask you about the past – the past that did not belong to me. Besides, if I did you would have the right to ask me, and – ." He stops suddenly, pale, and trembled.
She looks up at him.
"I ask nothing," she says, in a low voice. "You shall tell me all you want to tell me; just that, and no more."
"My darling, my dearest!" he says, but the trouble still rings in his voice. Shall he tell her? Now is the time. She would forgive him, love him none the less, if he told her all now. Shall he throw himself upon her great love and mercy?
For a moment Yorke's guardian angel hovers near him and whispers, "Tell her, trust her!" but he thrusts the angel aside and silences her.
"I am not worthy of you, dearest," he says; "I can tell you that much: no man is worthy of you! But the best of us couldn't love you better than I do, Leslie. Leslie! Do you know that when I heard your name it seemed to me the prettiest I had ever heard, and as if it belonged to some one I had loved for years? Have you any other name?"
She shakes her head.
"Isn't one enough?" she says, laughing, softly. "I am not big enough for more than one of two syllables. Why, see, yours is only one, or have you got more names? Tell me them? How strange; oh, how strange! I do not know rightly what you are called, and yet – ."
"Yet you love me, and promise to be my wife – why don't you say it right out?" he says.
She shakes her head.
"But your names?"
"Oh," he says, carelessly. "There's a string of 'em. Yorke, Clarence, Fitzhardinge Auchester – "
"And Rothbury," she says, with sudden gravity.
He starts slightly, and colors. This foolish whim of the duke's! What is to be done about it now?
"Duke of Rothbury," she goes on, gravely, and with an almost troubled smile. "I – I had forgotten – ."
"Go on forgetting!" he says, drawing her arm closer.
"Yes! I – you will not be angry?"
"At nothing you can say, unless it were, 'I do not love you!'"
"I was going to say that I wish I could – that I wish you were not a duke, and had no title of any kind!"
"So do I if you wish it," he says. "What does it matter?"
"But will it not matter?" she asks, her brows coming together. "Will not the people – your people, all those great folks who belong to you, your relations – be angry with me for – for – ."
"Stooping to love such a worthless, useless creature as I? Why should they?"
"I – I don't know. Yes I do. It is not girls like me, girls with no title or anything, poor girls who know nothing of the fashionable world, and have no relations above a plain 'Mr.' who ought to marry noblemen. I know enough for that. They will be right to be angry and – and disappointed!"
"Not they!" he says, lightly, but inwardly chafing against the bonds which his promise to the duke has woven round him. "Let them mind their own business!"
"But it is their business!" she says. "What a duke, a well-known nobleman, does, must be everybody's business, and everybody will be astonished and – sorry."
"Wait until they see you!" he says, confidently.
She looks up at him with eyes dewy with gratitude.
"Do you think everybody will see me with your eyes?" she says, in a low voice.
"I think every man will envy me and wish himself in my place!" he responds, promptly.
She shakes her head.
"No no! They will say when they hear of it that you have done wrong, and say it still more decidedly when they see me. Why, I shall not know what to do." She laughs half light-heartedly, half-anxiously. "I shall not know how to begin, even, to play the great lady; I shall make all sorts of mistakes, and call persons by their wrong names and titles. Why, I did not know how to address you, your grace!" And she looks up at him, with parted lips that smile but tremble a little.
He kisses them tenderly, reassuringly.
"You are only chaffing me," he says. "I can see that. You are the last girl in the world to be frightened by anybody. You'd just take your place in any set as naturally as if you'd known it and been in it all your life. Why, do you think I don't know how proud you are?"
"Am I?" she says, self-questioningly. "Yes; I think I was yesterday – until – until now. But now my pride seems to have melted into thin air, and I am only anxious. Do you know what I should do if I were to see that you were even the least bit ashamed of me?"
"What would you do? Something terrible?"
"I should die of shame for your sake!" she says, slowly.
"If you wait till you die of that complaint you'll live to be as old as – what's his name, Methuselah!" and he laughs. "Why, I feel so proud of winning you that I'm trying all I know not to swagger."
She gives his arm just the faintest pressure.
"Oh how foolish, how foolish!" she murmurs. "To be proud of me!"
"I dare say, but I am, you see! I know I've got one of the loveliest women in the world for a wife, and I shall get beastly conceited, I expect, and perfectly unendurable. It isn't every man who wins the love of an angel."
"Ah, don't," she says. "An angel! They will not think me that, but only a commonplace girl, who knows nothing, and is not fit to be – a duchess!"
She utters the word as if he did not like it, and he colors again.
"Tell me," she says, after a moment. "Tell me whom I shall have to fear most. You see, I don't know even if you have a mother – a father. I don't know anything!"
He is silent a moment, mentally execrating the chain of circumstances which compel him, force him, to – yes, deceive her!
"They are both dead," he says, truthfully. "I haven't any near relations – no brother and sister, I mean. I've an uncle, a Lord Eustace and his two sons who's the next to the dukedom – he and they."
"After you?" she says. "I don't understand – how should I?"
"It does not matter," he says, hurriedly.
"Tell me about him then – them. Is he nice? Will he be very angry?"
He laughs.
"No, he's not very nice. He's the miser of the family – you see, and you'll have cause to be ashamed of some of us, dearest! And he won't care the snap of his fingers whom I marry, or what becomes of me."
This would sound singularly improbable to Leslie if she were worldly wise; but she is not. As she says, she simply does not understand or realize.
"I am sorry," she says. "But I don't think it is true."
"You think they are all so proud and fond of me?" he laughs, with a faint tinge of bitterness. "Well, then I've other cousins – ."
"Mr. Temple?" she says.
"Yes, Mr. – Mr. Temple," he mutters.
"And what will he say?" she asks, with a smile.
"He? Oh – ." He stops. Yes, what will the duke say when he hears that Leslie "has made love," as he will put it, to the supposed duke?
"Look here, dearest," he says, after a pause.
"Why should you or I care a brass farthing what any one thinks or says! The only one I care about is your father."
"Ah, papa!" she murmurs; and she pictures to herself Mr. Lisle's amazement and distress at what he will regard as a "fuss" and disturbance of his placid "artistic" life.