"Then who was my father?" she asked.
"Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?"
"Is?... Then he isn't dead?"
Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips.
"I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in good time" (her daughter looked coldly unbelieving), "but since you are here I'll tell you now. Sit down on that chair and stop fidgeting——"
And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the divorcing of Buck.
The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not only her mother, but her father also.
Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff." He liked it.
Three months later she was sent to Paris.
Eight months later still she turned up again, not at Trant, but at the Captain's club in London. She announced that she had run away from the convent and did not intend to return to it. Her arrival, though not unwelcome, was inopportune, for the Captain had a little party that evening and seemed disconcerted. The toyshops, he reflected, were closed, and then he looked at his stepdaughter again.... It could not, after all, have been one of the more characteristic of the Captain's parties, for he took Louie to it, pigtail and all, and for a whole evening pinched nobody. Then he took her to his chambers, winked at his man in token of something extraordinary, hesitated, and then, with an "Oh, be hanged to it!" expression, gave Louie the key of his own sleeping apartment. Louie examined his prints a little wonderingly, but approved of his ribboned haircurlers and large frilled pincushion, and then went to sleep. The next day the Captain took her down to Trant and left her there.