“Is Grace Laurie still with you?”
He stared, thoroughly taken aback.
“Grace Laurie? My wife’s maid? She married and went to Australia six months ago. How could you know her?”
“As your daughter Diana, I knew her, of course!” she replied. “Poor Grace! She was a kind girl! She would have recognised my voice, I’m sure. Is it possible you don’t?”
“I don’t, indeed!” answered “Pa” cautiously, while using his best efforts to get her out of the house—“Come, come! I’m very sorry for you,—you are evidently one of those ‘lost identity’ cases of which we so often hear—and you are far too pretty to be in such a sad condition of mind! You see, you don’t know yourself, and you don’t know what you’re talking about! My daughter Diana was not like you at all,—she was a middle-aged woman—Ah!—over forty——”
“So she was—so she is!” said Diana—“I’m over forty! But, Pa, why give yourself away? It makes you so old!”
She threw him such a smile, and such a glance of arrowy brilliancy that his head whirled.
“Poor child, poor child!” he mumbled, taking her daintily-gloved hand and patting it. “Far gone!—far gone, indeed! And so beautiful, too!—so very beautiful!” Here he kissed the hand he had grasped. “There, there! You are almost normal! Be quite good! Here we are at the door—now, are you sure you have a car? Shall I come with you?”
Diana drew her hand away from her father’s hold, and her laugh, silvery sweet, rang out in a little peal of mirth.
“No, Pa! Fond as you are of the ladies, you cannot make love to your own daughter! The Prayer Book forbids! Besides, a mad girl is not fit for your little gallantries! You poor dear! One year has aged you rather badly! Aren’t you a leetle old for Miss Preston?”