"What rash folly! I anticipate your answer. You were in love."
"Yes, uncle."
"I am beginning to get puzzled. There is a kind of tangle here. In the first letter you wrote to me you signed yourself Nansie. Nothing more. When I replied to you I addressed you in your father's name. In your second letter, acquainting me that you were married, you signed yourself Nansie Manners."
"That is my name."
"You tell me that you have married into a wealthy family, and you come to me faint and hungry, with two-and-eightpence in your purse. And I will hazard the guess that you travelled third-class."
"I did, uncle."
"Explain the anomaly."
"When my husband told his father of our marriage he discarded him and turned him from the house."
"That explains it; but it is bad, very bad. See what comes of secret marriages. Hopes shattered, old ties broken, hearts embittered, parents and children parted in anger. Had you known all this beforehand would you have married?"
"No, uncle," replied Nansie, firmly. It was the first time the question had been put to her, and she could not but answer frankly. "I would not have done Kingsley such injustice."