With increasing nervousness and bewilderment, Innocent obeyed.
"You had my card, I think?" continued the lady, smiling ever so slightly—"I gave it to the servant—"
Innocent held it half crumpled in her hand.
"Yes," she said, trying to rally her self-possession—"Lady Maude
Blythe—"
"Exactly!—you have quite a nice pronunciation! May I sit down?" and, without waiting for the required permission, Lady Blythe sank indolently into the old oaken arm-chair where Farmer Jocelyn had so long been accustomed to sit, and, taking out a cobweb of a handkerchief powerfully scented, passed it languorously across her lips and brow.
"You have had a very sad day of it, I fear!" she continued—"Deaths and funerals are such unpleasant affairs! But the farmer—Mr. Jocelyn—was not your father, was he?" The question was put with a repetition of the former slight, cold smile.
"No,"—and the girl looked at her wonderingly—"but he was better than my own father who deserted me!"
"Dear me! Your own father deserted you! How shocking of him!" and Lady Blythe turned a pair of brilliant dark eyes full on the pale little face confronting her—"And your mother?"
"She deserted me, too."
"What a reprehensible couple!" Here Lady Blythe extended a delicately gloved hand towards her. "Come here and let me look at you!"