avely, "I am going to speak to you about your
father!"

She looked up at him in swift surprise.

"Is it necessary?"

"I think so," he answered. "You won't like what I'm going to tell you!
You'll think you've been badly treated. So you have! I pledged my word,
in a weak hour, with the others. To-day I'm going to break it. I think
it best."

"Well?"

"You've been deceived! You were told always that your father had died in
prison. He didn't."

"What!"

Her sharp cry rang out strangely into the little room. Already he could
see signs of the coming storm, and the task which lay before him seemed
more hateful than ever.

"Listen," he said. "I must tell you some things which you know in order
to explain others which you do not know. Your father was a younger son
born of extravagant parents, virtually penniless and without the least
capacity for earning money. I don't blame him--who could? I couldn't
earn money myself. If I hadn't got it I daresay that I should go to the
bad as he did."

The girl's lips tightened, and she drew a little breath through her
teeth. Davenant hesitated.

"You know all about that company affair. Of course they made your father
the butt of the whole thing, although he was little more than a tool. He
was sent to prison for seven years. You were only a child then and your
mother was dead. Well, when the seven years were up, your relations
and mine too, Ernestine, concocted what I have always considered an
ill-begotten and a miserably selfish plot. Your father, unfortunately,
yielded to them, for your sake. You were told that he had died in
prison. He did not. He lived through his seven years there, and when he
came out did so in another name and went abroad on the morning of the
day of his liberation."

"Good God!" she cried. "And now!"

"He is dead," Davenant answered hastily, "but only just lately. Wait
a minute. You are going to be furiously angry. I know it, and I don't
blame you. Only listen for a moment. The scheme was hatched up between
my father and your two uncles. I have always hated it and always
protested against it. Remember that and be fair to me. This is how they
reasoned. Your father's health, they said, was ruined, and if he lives
the seven years what is there left for him when he comes out? He was a
man, as you know, of aristocratic and fastidious tastes. He would have
the best of everything--society, clubs, sport. Now all these were barred
against him. If he had reapp