At the altered tone of his voice—­altered to a quiet, fatherly seriousness—­Magdalen’s arms clung round him closer than before.

“Have I disappointed you, papa?” she asked, faintly.  “Don’t say I have disappointed you!  Who am I to tell my secret to, if not to you?  Don’t let him go—­don’t! don’t!  You will break his heart.  He is afraid to tell his father; he is even afraid you might be angry with him.  There is nobody to speak for us, except—­except me.  Oh, don’t let him go!  Don’t for his sake—­” she whispered the next words in a kiss—­“Don’t for Mine!”

Her father’s kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair head tenderly.  “Hush, my love,” he said, almost in a whisper; “hush!” She little knew what a revelation every word, every action that escaped her, now opened before him.  She had made him her grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day.  She had romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him in her gowns.  He had never been long enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced on his attention.  His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was a taller child in later years—­and had taught him little more.  And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman rushed over his mind.  He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre ssed against his; in the nervous thrill of her arms clasped around his neck.  The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a woman—­with the master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart already!

“Have you thought long of this, my dear?” he asked, as soon as he could speak composedly.  “Are you sure—?”

She answered the question before he could finish it.

“Sure I love him?” she said.  “Oh, what words can say Yes for me, as I want to say it?  I love him—!” Her voice faltered softly; and her answer ended in a sigh.

“You are very young.  You and Frank, my love, are both very young.”

She raised her head from his shoulder for the first time.  The thought and its expression flashed from her at the same moment.

“Are we much younger than you and mamma were?” she asked, smiling through her tears.

She tried to lay her head back in its old position; but as she spoke those words, her father caught her round the waist, forced her, before she was aware of it, to look him in the face—­and kissed her, with a sudden outburst of tenderness which brought the tears thronging back thickly into her eyes.  “Not much younger, my child,” he said, in low, broken tones—­“not much younger than your mother and I were.”  He put her away from him, and rose from the seat, and turned his head aside quickly.  “Wait here, and compose yourself; I will go indoors and speak to your mother.”  His voice trembled over those parting words; and he left her without once looking round again.