"He is my master, Lizzie."
"That's no motive. So I think to myself, I wonder if it will last! You see, daddy, I am inquisitive, as all girls are, and I want to find out. And I mean to--for reasons."
He laughs at this, and says that she is an inquisitive girl indeed. What makes her so inquisitive about Mr. Sheldrake when she has never seen him?
"O, then you don't know!" she exclaims.
"Don't know what, Lizzie? You talk in riddles."
"Don't know that Mr. Sheldrake met me at a little distance from here yesterday, and went down with me to Hampton Court?"
"Lizzie!" he exclaims in a tone of alarm, which sets Lizzie's sharp eyes at work studying his face, while the serious look on hers deepens in intensity.
The thought which prompts his alarm is this: Is Mr. Sheldrake playing him false? He remembers, when Mr. Sheldrake proposed that he should turn over a new leaf, asking his master if he meant any harm to Lizzie. To that question Mr. Sheldrake had returned a scornful reply. But Lizzie's statement revives his suspicion. Her honour is as dear to him as a daughter's would have been. But how to warn her? Her high spirit would not permit of plain speaking; and besides, the subject is a delicate one, and the mere mention of it by him might be construed into a suspicion of Lizzie. She sees his trouble and perplexity, and divines the cause of it.
"Don't be frightened, daddy," she says; "Mr. Sheldrake did not make love to me. I am not his motive. A girl can soon tell, you know."
"Tell me all about your meeting with him, Lizzie--how it came about."