“You were with Miss Bennett, then?  Any body else?”

“Only a gentleman,” said Letitia, hanging her head and blushing with that painful precocity of consciousness so sad to see in a little girl.

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know.  Miss Bennett didn’t tell me.  She only said he was a friend of hers, who liked little girls, and that if I could come and have a walk with them, without telling Phillis or any body, she would let me off all the hardest of my French lessons.  And so—­and so—­Oh, hide me, there’s papa at the hall door, and Aunt Henrietta coming out of the dining-room.  And Aunt Henrietta never believes what I say, even if I tell her the truth.  Oh, let me run—­let me run.”

The child’s terror was so uncontrollable that there was nothing for it but to yield; and she fled.

“Titia!  Titia!” called out her father.  “Christian, what is the matter?  What was my little girl crying for?”

There was no avoiding the domestic catastrophe, even had Christian wished to avoid it, which she did not.  She felt it was a case in which concealment was impossible—­wrong.  Dr. Grey ought to be told, and Miss Gascoigne likewise.

“Your little girl has been very naughty, papa; but others have been more to blame than she.  Come with me—­will you come too, Aunt Henrietta?—­and I will tell you all about it.”

She did so, as briefly as she could, and in telling it she discovered one fact—­which she passed over, and yet it made her glad—­that Dr. Grey, like herself, had been kept wholly in the dark about the engagement of Miss Bennett as governess.

“I meant to have told you today, though, after I had given her sufficient trial,” said Miss Gascoigne, sullenly; “I had with her the best of recommendations, and I do not believe one word of all this story—­that is,” waking up to the full meaning of what she was saying, “not without the most conclusive evidence.”

“Evidence,” repeated Dr. Grey.  “You have my wife’s word, and my daughter’s.”

“Your daughter is the most arrant little liar I ever knew!”

The poor father shrank back.  Perhaps he knew, by sad experience, that Aunt Henrietta’s condemnation was not altogether without foundation.  His look expressed such unutterable pain that Christian came forward and spoke out strongly, almost angrily.

“It is fear that makes a liar, even as harshness and injustice create deceit and underhandedness.  Love a child and trust it, and if it does wrong, punish it neither cruelly nor unfairly, and it will never tell falsehoods.  Titia will not—­she shall not, as long as I am alive to keep her to the truth.”

Dr. Grey looked fondly at his wile’s young, glowing face and even Miss Gascoigne, the hard, worldly woman, viewing all things in her narrow, worldly way, was silenced for the time.  Then she began again, pouring out a torrent of explanations and self-exculpations, which soon resolved themselves into the simple question, What was to be done?  There—­she ended.