suit you,
Lola? A person can pick up a mighty good time over there, they say. And
bonnets--how many bonnets can you manage, Lola? Why, she looks kind of
stunned, don't she, Miss Combs?"

Jane was gazing at the girl. She knew well with what force the blow so
long averted had fallen at last. In her own breast she seemed to feel
the pain with which Lola had received her father's revelations.

"Lola," she cried, leaning forward, "don't feel so, my lamb! I'm sorry
you had to know this. I tried hard to keep it from you. But it's all
out now, and you must try to bear it. Your father don't realize--he
hasn't meant to hurt you. He's fond of you, dearie. And he's going to
take you to foreign lands, and you can see all the great pictures and
statues, and have a chance to learn all the things you spoke
of--designing and such. Don't look so, my child!"

Mr. Keene began to feel highly uncomfortable. Evidently, in his own
phrase, he had "put his foot into it;" he had said too much. He had
disclosed fallacies in himself of which Lola, it seemed, knew nothing.
And now Lola, who had received him with such flattering warmth, was
turning her face away and looking strange and stern and stricken.

Nor did Miss Combs seem fairly to have grasped the liberality of his
intentions. She, too, had a curious air of not being exalted in any way
by so much good fortune. She appeared to be engaged solely in trying to
reconcile Lola to a situation which Mr. Keene considered dazzling.

Altogether it was very disturbing, especially to a man who did not
understand what he had done to bring about so unpleasant a turn. He
was about to ask some explanation, when Lola said slowly, "And you,
_tia_, you have done so much for me that you have nothing left? Is that
so?"

"I don't need much, Lola. I'll be all right. Don't you worry."

"You won't mind living here alone and poor?"

"She won't be poor, Lola," interpolated Mr. Keene. "Haven't I said so?
And you can come and see her, you know. Everything will come out all
right."

Lola turned a little toward him, and he was glad to see that her eyes
were soft and gentle and that the stern look had disappeared. "Yes,"
she said, "it will come out all right for tia, because I shall be here
to see that it does."

She caught her breath and added, "You couldn't think I should be
willing to go away and leave her like this? Even if I hadn't heard how
much more she has done for me than I dreamed? For I have been igno