"Then weren't you very much to blame to allow the mistake to arise?" asked Maurice, bluntly.
"Of course I was. That's the abominable and confounded part of it. Some hasty words of mine were misinterpreted, of course. I told you I had been an ass."
"Well, I hope it is set straight now?"
"As far as I can set it straight. Probably nothing will undo the effect. She'll think that I was cruel in the first instance if not in the last."
He sat staring at his boots, with a very discontented expression of countenance. But he did not get much sympathy from Mr. Kenyon.
"Well," he said, "I suppose you've yourself to blame. I've no doubt you have been very hasty, lots of times. It's my own idea that if you went into detail over a good many actions of your past life"—this was very significantly said—"you would find that you had been mistaken pretty often. We all do. And there's one mistake that I think I can point out to you."
Caspar looked at him hard for a moment from under his bushy eyebrows.
"One subject, Kenyon," he said, seriously, "I shall ask you to respect."
"All right," said Maurice. "I am only speaking of your daughter. You must allow me to say that I think you have misjudged her, ever since she has been in your house for the last three months. I did just the same, at first. You see, she came here, as far as I can make out, puzzled, ignorant of the world, deprived of her mother's help and care, thrown on the tender mercies of a father whom she did not know——"
"And whom she took to be an ogre," said Brooke, with a bitter, little laugh.