"You will miss your train," said Miss Leonora.
"I have done that already; so we may as well find out what brings the girl here. Why not take her inside the park gates? If any one passes by——"
"You are right, Hubert, as usual. Come here, child—come inside for a minute or two; I want to speak to you."
The little girl glanced doubtfully at Miss Vane's handsome imperious face. She seemed inclined to break away from her questioners and run down the road; but a look from under her long lashes at Hubert seemed to reassure her. The young man's face had certainly an attractive quality—there was some sort of passion and pain in it, some mark of a great struggle which had not been all ignoble; even if he had failed to win the victory, a look which worked its way into the hearts of many who would have refused their hands to him in sign of fellowship if they had known the whole story of his life. This subtle charm had its influence on little Jenny Westwood, although she had no suspicion of its cause. She moved a little closer to him, and followed him inside the iron gates of Beechfield Park. The great trees flung their shade over the broad drive which ran between mossy banks for a mile before the house was reached. Between their trunks the sunshine flickered on sheets of bracken, already turning a little yellow from the heat; the straight spikes of the foxglove, not yet in bloom, were visible here and there amongst the undulating forms of the woodland fern. Hubert closed the gate carefully behind him, and stood with his aunt so as to screen the child from observation, should friends or acquaintances pass by. He had a keen perception of the fact that Miss Vane was making an enormous effort over pride and prejudice and affectionate prepossessions of all kinds in even speaking a word to Andrew Westwood's child. He himself, in the troubled depths of his soul, was stirred by a wild rush of pity and remorse, of sharp unaffected desire to undo what had been done already, to amend the injury that his hand had wrought—a far greater injury indeed than he had dreamt of doing. He had always fancied Andrew Westwood as lonely a man as—in the world's eyes—he was worthless; he had not known until the day of the trial that the prisoner had a child.
"Your name is 'Westwood,' I think?" Miss Vane began stonily.
Hubert was keenly aware of the harshness of her tones. The girl nodded.
"Your father is Andrew Westwood?"
She nodded again, a dull red creeping into her brown cheeks.
"What are you doing here?" There was a tragic intensity of indignation in Miss Vane's way of putting the question, which Hubert wondered whether the child could comprehend. "You ought to be far away from Beechfield—it is the last place to which you should come!"
The child lowered her face until it was nearly hidden on her breast, and spoke for the second time.