Then, as she looked disconcerted still, and as if she did not know quite what he meant, he went on, ardently:
"You have the privilege, you know, of being the only daughter of a man who is not only very widely known, but very much respected and admired. That doesn't seem much to you perhaps?"—for he thought he saw Lesley's lip curl, and his tone became a little sharp. "I assure you it means a great deal in a world like ours—in the world of London. It means that your father is a man of great ability and of unimpeachable honesty—I mean honesty of thought, honesty of purpose—intellectual honesty. You have no idea how rare that quality is amongst public men—or literary men—or journalists. Indeed it is a wonder that Brooke is so successful as he is, considering that he never wrote or said a word that he did not mean. No doubt that seems a small thing to you: it is not a small thing to say of a journalist now-a-days."
"I don't know much about journalists," said Lesley. "But all that you are saying would be taken as a matter of course amongst gentlemen."
There was a snub for Maurice, and a sly hit at her father, too. Maurice began to wax warm.
"Miss Brooke," he said, "you entirely fail to understand me; and I can imagine that you, perhaps, fail to understand your father also."
"If I do," said Lesley, proudly, "I hardly need to be set right by a stranger."
The young doctor sprang to his feet. "I a stranger!" he said. "I, who have known and appreciated and worked with Caspar Brooke for the last half dozen years—I to be called a stranger by his daughter? I don't think that's fair: I don't indeed."
He paused and put his tea-cup down upon the table. "If you'll only think for a minute, Miss Brooke," he said, entreatingly, with such a sudden softening of voice and manner that Lesley sat amazed, "I cannot believe but that you'll pardon me. I owe so much to your father—he has been a guide, a helper, almost a prophet to me, ever since I came across him when I was a medical student at King's College Hospital, and I only want everybody to see him with my eyes—loving and reverent eyes, I can tell you, though I wouldn't say so to everybody, seeing that love and reverence seem to have gone out of fashion! But to his daughter——"
"His daughter surely does not need to be taught how to think of him by another, whether he be an old friend or a comparative stranger," said Lesley. "She can learn to know him for herself."
"But can she?"—Maurice Kenyon's Irish strain, which always led him to be more eager and explicit in speech than if he had been entirely of Anglo-Saxon nationality, was running away with him. "Are you sure that she can? Look here, Miss Brooke: you come to your father's house straight from a French convent, I believe. What can you know of English life? of the strife of political parties, of literary parties, of faiths and theories and passions? You are plunged into the midst of a new world—it can't help but be strange to you at first, and you must feel a trifle forlorn and miserable—at least I should think so——"