“You have heard me speak of Fay, my playfellow?”
“Yes.”
“I remember the evening my father asked mamma to let her come to us. It seemed just now as if you were using his very words; and yet all things were different.”
Mildred had told him very little about that childish sorrow of hers. She had shrunk from any allusion to the girl whose existence bore witness against her father. She, too, fond and frank as she was, had kept her own counsel, had borne the burden of a secret.
“Yes, I have heard you speak of the girl you called Fay, and of whom you must have been very fond, for the tears came into your eyes when you mentioned her. Did she live with you long?”
“O, no, a very short time! She was sent to school—to a finishing-school at Brussels.”
“Brussels!” he repeated, with a look of surprise.
“Yes. Do you know anything about Brussels schools?”
“Nothing personally. I have heard of girls educated there. And what became of your playfellow after the Brussels school?”
“I never heard.”