a furtive but
tender glance. "How must _he_ have felt, when he thought what grief he
brought to her young life!"

"You are talking of mother?" asks Kit, suddenly, letting her large dark
eyes rest on Miss Penelope's face, as though searching for latent
madness there.

"Yes, my dear, of course."

"He would not have dared so to treat her had her father been alive or
had we been blessed with a brother," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. "He
proved himself a dastard and a coward."

"Perhaps there was some mistake," says Monica, timidly, plucking a pale
blossom and pretending to admire it.

"No, no. We believe he contracted an affection for some other girl, and
for her sake jilted your mother. If so, retribution fit and proper
followed on his perfidy, because he brought no wife later on to grace
his home. Doubtless he was betrayed in his turn. That was only just."

"There seems to be reason in that conjecture," says Miss Penelope,
"because he went abroad almost immediately. I saw him shortly before he
left the country, and he was then quite a broken-down man. He must have
taken his _own_ misfortune greatly to heart."

"Served him right!" says Miss Priscilla, uncompromisingly. "He deserved
no greater luck. Your mother suffered so much at his hands that she
almost lost her health. I don't believe she ever got over it."

"Oh, yes, she did," says Terry, suddenly; "she got over it uncommonly
well. We didn't know who Mr. Desmond was then, of course; but I know she
used to make quite a joke of him."

"A joke!" says Miss Priscilla, in an awful tone.

"Yes, regular fun, you know," goes on Terence, undaunted. "One day she
was telling father some old story about Mr. Desmond, a 'good thing'
_she_ called it, and she was laughing heartily; but he wasn't, and when
she had finished, I remember, he said something to her about want of
'delicacy of feeling,' or something like that."

"I was there," says Kit, in her high treble. "He said, too, she ought to
be ashamed of herself."

"Oh, that was nothing," says Mr. Beresford, airily. "Father and mother
never agreed for a moment; they were always squabbling from the time
they got up till they went to bed again."

The Misses Blake have turned quite pale.

"Terence how can you speak so of your sainted mother?" says Miss
Penelope. "I'm sure, from her letters to us, she was a most _devoted_
mother and wife, and, indeed, sacrificed her every wish and pleasure to
yours."

"I never knew it