The expression of his face was so pitiful that she could not help replying.
"I cannot tell you much," she said. "I have been, like yourself, careless over the child. I could not keep my secret and keep her, so she went."
"Yes, Lady Delapain told me; but have you never seen her? Do you know nothing of her?"
"I have seen her twice."
And then Lady Estelle gave him the whole history of Doris.
"She is very beautiful," she said, in conclusion, "but she resembles you more than me. She is a Studleigh in face and in character. She is faithless and debonair, Ulric, as you are."
"Perhaps you judge her rather harshly," he said, with great tenderness in his voice. "Why do you call her faithless, Estelle?"
"Because she was engaged to marry some one who loved her with a true and tender love. She ran away from him, and almost broke his heart."
"Who was the some one?" asked the earl.
"Earle Moray, a poet and a gentleman—one whom a princess might marry, if she loved him."