"You are sad?" she asked him. "Tell me what it is."
The child's frankness was no less sweet than the woman's sympathy behind it.
"My father has returned," he replied. "That is how I found entrance here. He is your brother's friend."
She paled a little at the words, and her soft brown eyes took a harder look as she glanced across the room to where Morice hung on the arm of Sir Stephen Berrington in merriest mood.
"Your father?" she whispered, and Michael drew back his breath sharply.
The faint contempt and anger in the two words struck him the cruellest blow he had ever felt.
Perhaps she knew it and repented, for she laid a soft little hand on his clenched one.
"Forgive me," she whispered. "Only—for the moment—I thought of my father."
Michael's face was stern.
"And I also, mistress," he replied. "We have no right here. It shames me——"