"Is there any occasion to tell them?"
"I don't suppose there is," she answered, absently, and then, with an anxious look in her clear eyes, she said the one thing that hurt him in all the years he knew her. "Father, you didn't hold it back because you didn't think us good enough?"
He turned round quickly. "If it was anything of that sort," he answered, "it was because I did not think myself good enough. My people led useless, extravagant lives, and my own has not been much better. I have felt ashamed that you should know anything concerning us, and it wasn't necessary for our contentment here."
"No," she said, slowly, "it wasn't."
"Nor is it any more necessary to tell people our affairs now than it has been hitherto. If Cyril dies I shall not alter my name—what good would a title be to me? I have no son to come after me, no one at all to inherit anything except Margaret, for whom this doesn't matter."
"I'm glad you've told Margaret," Mrs. Vincent answered. She was silent for a moment, and then went on, thoughtfully: "She is changing in herself; I can feel it. She'll not be content here always. She is stretching her wings already, like a young bird that is waiting to fly."
"Well, at any rate, she had better stay quietly here till my return," he said. "By-the-way, an old friend of mine has taken the vicarage house—Sir George Stringer; he is sure to come over and see you."
"We are getting very grand, father," she said, ruefully, resenting it a little in her heart. She had been so well content with her own station in life, and had never wished to see it either lifted or lowered; the first seemed undignified to her, the last would have meant humiliation.
"It doesn't make any difference, dear," he said. "We were a worthless, ramshackling set, who put such privileges as we had under our feet; and as for me, I haven't even enough grace to take me to church on Sunday. I want to forget everything but the life of the last twenty years—you, and Margaret."