“Oh, I like you to speak plainly,” cried Frances. “Talk to me about him; ask me anything you please.” The tears came into her voice, and she put her hands together instinctively. She had been feeling very lonely and home-sick, and out of accord with all her surroundings. To return even in thought to the old life and its associations brought a flood of bitter sweetness to her heart.
“I can see at least,” said Sir Thomas, “that he has secured a most loving champion in his child.”
This arrested her enthusiasm in a moment. She was too sincere to accept such a solution of her own complicated feelings. Was she the loving champion which she was so suddenly assumed to be? She became vaguely aware that the things which had rushed back upon her mind and filled her with longing were not the excellences of her father, but rather the old peace and ease and ignorance of her youthful life, which nothing could now restore. She could not respond to the confidence of her father’s friend. He had kept her in ignorance; he had deceived her; he had not made any attempt to clear the perplexities of her difficult path, but left her to find out everything, more perhaps than she yet knew. Sir Thomas was a little surprised that she made him no reply; but he set it down to emotion and agitation, which might well take from so young and innocent a girl the possibility of reply.
“I don’t know whether I am justified in the hope I have been entertaining ever since you came,” he said. “It is very hard that your father should be banished from his own country and all his duties by—what was, after all, never a very important cause. There has been no unpardonable wrong on either side. He is terribly sensitive, you know. And Lady Markham—she is a dear friend of mine; I have a great affection for her——”
“If you please,” said Frances quickly, “it is not possible for me to listen to any discussion of mamma.”
“My dear Miss Waring,” he cried, “this is better and better. You are then a partisan on both sides?”
Poor little Frances felt as if she were at least hemmed in on both sides, and without any way of escape. She looked up in his face with an appeal which he did not understand, for how was it possible to suppose that she did not know all about a matter which had affected her whole life?
“Don’t you think,” said Sir Thomas, drawing very close to her, stooping over her, “that if we two were to lay our heads together, we might bring things to a better understanding? Constance, to whom I have often spoken on the subject, knew only one side—and that not the difficult side. Markham was mixed up in it all, and could never be impartial. But you know both, and your father best. I am sure you are full of sense, as Waring’s daughter ought to be. Don’t you think——”
He had taken both Frances’ hands in his enthusiasm, and pressed so closely upon her that she had to retreat a step, almost with alarm. And he had his back to the light, shutting her out from all succour, as she thought. It was all the girl could do to keep from crying out that she knew nothing,—that she was more ignorant than any one; and when there suddenly came from behind Sir Thomas the sound of many voices, without agitation or special meaning, her heart gave a bound of relief, as if she had escaped. He gave her hands a vehement pressure and let them drop; and then Claude Ramsay’s voice of gentle pathos came in. “Are you not afraid, Miss Waring, of the draught? There must be some door or window open. It is enough to blow one away.”
“You look like a couple of conspirators,” said Markham. “Fan, your little eyes are blinking like an owl’s. Come back, my dear, into the light.”