“My dear!” the woman exclaimed, holding Sofia’s hands and kissing her cheek.  And then, looking aside to Victor, “But how very like!” she added with the air of tender reminiscence.

“Oh!” Sofia cried, “you knew my mother?”

“Indeed—­and loved her.”  Sofia never dreamed to question the woman’s sincerity; and her charm of manner was irresistible.  “You must try to like me a little for her sake—­”

“As if one could help liking you for your own, Mrs. Waring!”

“Prettily said, my dear.  You have inherited more from your mother than your good looks alone.  Is it not so, mon prince?”

“Much more.”  Victor’s enigmatic smile gave place to a look of regret and uneasiness.  “Let us hope, however, not too much.  Heredity,” he mused in sombre mood, “is a force of such fatality in our lives....”

He gave a gesture of solicitude and continued with characteristic deliberation, and that preciseness of diction which he seemed never able to forget, even though deeply moved.

“More than ever, now that Sofia is restored to me, I could wish the past other than what it was, that she might start life with a handicap less cruel of inherited tendencies.  But when I reflect that both her parents—­”

“Please!” Sofia begged, piteous.  “Oh, please!”

“I am sorry, my dear.”  Victor closed tender hands over those which the girl had lifted in appeal.  “It is for your own good only I give myself this pain of warning you against your worst enemy, I mean yourself, the self that is so strange a compound of hereditary weaknesses....  Please remember always that, no matter what may happen, however far you may be led into transgression of the social codes, I shall never reproach you, on the contrary, you may count implicitly on my sympathetic understanding.  Never forget, I, too, have known, have suffered and fought myself—­and in the end won at a cost I am not yet finished paying, nor will be, I fear, this side my grave.”

He sighed from his heart, and bowing a stricken head, seemed to lose himself in disconsolate reverie—­but not so far as to suffer the interruption which Sofia made to offer and which he stayed with an eloquent hand.

“You do not understand?  But naturally.  Let me explain.  No:  there is no reason why Sybil—­Mrs. Waring—­should not hear.  She is a dear friend of long years, she understands.”

With a quiet murmur—­“Oh, quite!”—­Mrs. Waring ran an affectionate arm round Sofia’s shoulders and gently held the girl to her.

“When I determined to forsake the bad old ways,” Victor pursued—­“this you must know, my dear—­I had friends—­of a sort—­who resented my defection, set themselves against my will and, when they found they could not swerve me from my purpose, became my enemies.  That was long ago, but to this day some of them persist in their enmity—­I have to be constantly on my guard.”

“You mean there is danger?” Sofia asked in quick anxiety.  “Your life—?”