"If I were your daughter, you could not have chosen a better place than this," she said.
"If you were my daughter, I doubt if I could feel a deeper interest in your fate than I feel now," answered Sir Oswald, quietly.
Miss Beaumont the elder received her pupil with ceremonious kindness. She looked at the girl with the keen glance of examination which becomes habitual to the eye of the schoolmistress; but the most severe scrutiny would have failed to detect anything unladylike or ungraceful in the deportment of Honoria Milford.
"The young lady is charming," said Miss Beaumont, confidentially, as
the baronet was taking leave; "any one could guess that she was an
Eversleigh. She is so elegant, so patrician in face and manner. Ah, Sir
Oswald, the good old blood will show itself."
The baronet smiled as he bade adieu to the schoolmistress. He had told Honoria that policy had compelled him to speak of her as a distant relative of his own; and there was no fear that the girl would betray herself or him by any awkward admissions.
Sir Oswald felt depressed and gloomy as he drove back to town. It seemed to him as if, in parting from his protégée, he had lost something that was necessary to his happiness.
"I have not spent half a dozen hours in her society," he thought, "and yet she occupies my mind more than my nephew, Reginald, who for fifteen years of my life has been the object of so much hope, so many cares. What does it all mean? What is the key to this mystery?"
* * * * *