'No?'
'No; and Chops is fifteen, you know, and so good and so fond of me; but he is so fat that he can't look at you, only just blinks over his cheeks. But Chops is so kind to me—quite loves me. And so does Wallace. But I love Wallace better than anybody else, and everybody else loves Wallace.'
'And Wallace and everybody love Lotty, I'm sure of that.'
'Oh, Wallace loves me, and would die for me any day. But, of course, everybody doesn't. I'm only just a property, you know.'
'But your father and mother?'
Frank Antony Blake felt the small, soft hand tremble in his.
'There is no mother, sir. Never was a mother in my time. But father'——
The child was crying—yes, and sobbing—as if her heart would break.
Then, though Frank Antony was tall and strong for his eighteen years, he didn't really know what to do with a girl who burst into tears at night on a lonesome moor. He could remember no precedent. It mightn't be correct, he thought, to take her in his arms and kiss her and try to soothe her, so he merely said, 'Never mind, Lotty; never mind. It is sure to come all right somehow.'
For the life of him, however, he couldn't have told you what was wrong or what there was to come right. In the fast-waning light Lotty looked up at him ever so sadly, and he could not help noticing now what he had not noticed before—Lotty was really a beautiful child.