"Not so long a time, Miss Brooke? I thought you had come home for good."
"Only for a year," said Lesley, coloring hotly. "Then I go back to mamma."
Maurice said nothing at first. He felt the hand that rested on his arm tremble slightly, and he knew that he ought to make no more inquiries. But he could not refrain from adding, almost jealously—
"You will be glad of that?"
"Oh, yes! You do not know my mother?" said Lesley, half shyly, half boldly.
"No, I never saw her."
"It is very hard to be so long away from her. She is so sweet and good."
"But you have your father? You are learning to know him now."
"Oh, yes, but I want them both," said Lesley, with an indescribably gentle and tender intonation. And as they reached Euston Road and were obliged to leave off talking while they threaded their way through the intricacies of vehicular traffic, Mr. Kenyon was revolving in his mind a new idea, namely, the possibility of a reconciliation between Brooke and his wife. He had never thought much about Lady Alice before: she seemed to him to have passed out of Caspar Brooke's life entirely; and if it were not for this link between the two—this sweet and noble-spirited and lovely girl—she would not have been likely to come back into it. But Lesley might perhaps reunite the two, and Maurice's heart began to burn within him with fear for his hero's happiness. Why should any Lady Alice trouble the peace of a worker for mankind like Caspar Brooke?
They did not talk very much more on their way to Upper Woburn Place. They found Ethel and Oliver standing on the steps of Mr. Brooke's house, evidently waiting for the truants. It struck Lesley as she came up that Oliver Trent's brow was ominously dark, and that Ethel's pretty, saucy face wore an expression of something like anxiety or distress.