him that this subject was her father's favourite
study. Wilfrid put the question now with a smile.

'Yes, very likely,' she replied, smiling also, but faintly. 'It gives my
father pleasure when I do so.'

'You have not a keen interest in the subject yourself?'

'I try to have.'

Her voice was of singular quality; if she raised it the effect was not
agreeable, owing possibly to its lack of strength, but in low tones,
such as she employed at present, it fell on the ear with a peculiar
sweetness, a natural melody in its modulation.

'The way in which you speak of your father interests me,' said Wilfrid,
leaning his chin upon his hand, and gazing at her freely. 'You seem so
united with him in sympathy.'

She did not turn her eyes to him, but her face gathered brightness.

'In sympathy, yes,' she replied, speaking now with more readiness. 'Our
tastes often differ, but we are always at one in feeling. We have been
companions ever since I can remember.'

'Is your mother living?'

'Yes.'

Something in the tone of the brief affirmative kept Wilfrid from further
questioning.

'I wonder,' he said, 'what you think of the relations existing between
myself and my father. We are excellent friends, don't you think?
Strange--one doesn't think much about such things till some occasion
brings them forward. Whether there is deep sympathy between us, I
couldn't say. Certainly there are many subjects on which I should not
dream of speaking to him unless necessity arose; partly, I suppose, that
is male reserve, and partly English reserve. If novels are to be
trusted, French parents and children speak together with much more
freedom; on the whole that must be better.'

She made no remark.

'My father,' he continued, 'is eminently a man of sense if I reflect on
my boyhood, I see how admirable his treatment of me has always been. I
fancy I must have been at one time rather hard to manage; I know I was
very passionate and stubbornly self-willed. Yet he neither let me have
my own way nor angered me by his opposition. In fact, he made me respect
him. Now that we stand on equal terms, I dare say he has something of
the same feeling towards myself. And So it comes that we are excellent
friends.'

She listened with a scarcely perceptible smile.

'Perhaps this seems to you a curiously dispassionate way of treating
such a subject,' Wilfrid added, with a laugh. 'It illustrates what I
meant in saying I doubted whether there was deep sy