“I am glad,” she said simply.  “I must finish what I was telling you.  Your father was continually talking and thinking of you.  He knew all about you at college.  He knew about your degree, of your cricket and rowing.  Lately he began to get restless.  He lost sight of you after you left Oxford, and it worried him.  There were reasons, as you know, why it was not well for him to come to England, but nevertheless he determined to brave it out.  It was to find you that he risked so much.  He left me on New Year’s Day, and I have never heard a word from him since.  That is why I came to England.”

“The whole reason?” I asked, like a fool.

“The whole reason,” she affirmed simply.

“I do not wish to see my father,” I said.  “If he comes to me I shall tell him so.”

“He wants to tell you his story himself,” she murmured.

“I would never listen to it,” I answered.  She sighed.

“You are very young,” she said.  “You do not know what temptation is.  You do not know how badly he was treated.  You have heard his history, perhaps, from his enemies.  He is getting old now, Guy.  I think that if you saw him now you would pity him.”

“My pity,” I answered, “would never be strong enough to suffer me to open the door to him—­if he should come.  He has left me alone all these years.  The only favour I would ever ask of him would be that he continues to do so.”

“You will believe the story of strangers?”

“No one in the world could be a greater stranger to me than he.”  She sighed.

“You will not even let me be your friend,” she pleaded.  “You are young, you are perhaps ambitious.  There may be many ways in which I could help you.”

“As you helped my father, perhaps,” I answered bitterly.  “Thank you, I have no need of friends—­that sort of friends.”

Her eyes seemed to narrow a little, and the smile upon her lips was forced.

“Is that kind of you?” she exclaimed.  “Your father was in a position of great trust.  It is different with you.  You are idle, and you need a career.  England has so little to offer her young men, but there are other countries—­”

I interrupted her brusquely.

“Thank you,” I said, “but I have employment, and such ambitions as I have admit of nothing but an honest career.”

Again I saw that contraction of her eyes, but she never winced or changed her tone.

“You have employment?” she asked, as though surprised.

“Yes.  As you doubtless know, I am in the service of the Duke of Rowchester,” I told her.

“It is news to me,” she replied.  “You will forgive me at least for being interested, Guy.  But when you say in the service of the Duke of Rowchester you puzzle me.  In England what does that, mean?”

“I am one of the Duke’s secretaries,” I answered.

“Is the Duke, then, a politician?” she asked, “that he needs secretaries?”