“In that case, Sergeant Wilks,” Mrs. Walsham said, “let this be her home for the time.  Before you told me your story, I had made up my mind to ask you to let her remain with me.  You need feel under no obligation, for the money you have paid me is amply sufficient to pay for the expenses of what she eats for years.  It will be a real pleasure for me to keep her, for she has become a part of the house, and we should miss her sorely, indeed.  She is quick and intelligent, and I will teach her all I know, and can train her up to take a situation as a governess in a gentleman’s family, or perhaps—­” and she laughed, “your little romance might come true some day, and she can in that case stop in this home until James makes her another.”

“You are very kind, ma’am,” the sergeant said.  “Truly kind indeed; and I humbly accept your offer, except that so long as I live she shall be no expense to you.  I earn more than enough for my wants, and can, at any rate, do something towards preventing her from being altogether a burden on your hands.  And now, ma’am, how would you recommend me to go to work with the vindictive old man up at the Hall?”

“I shouldn’t have thought he was vindictive.  That is not at all the character he bears.”

“No,” the sergeant said, “I hear him spoken well of; but I have seen, in other cases, men, who have had the name of being pleasant and generous, were yet tyrants and brutes in their own family.  I judge him as I found him—­a hard hearted, tyrannical, vindictive father.  I think I had better not see him myself.  We have never met.  I have never set eyes on him save here in church; but he regarded me as responsible for the folly of his son.  He wrote me a violent letter, and said I had inveigled the lad into the marriage; and although I might have told him it was false, I did not answer his letter, for the mischief was done then, and I hoped he would cool down in time.

“However, that is all past now; but I don’t wish to see him.  I was thinking of letting the child go to the Hall by herself, and drop in suddenly upon him.  She is very like her father, and may possibly take his heart by storm.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Walsham assented.  “Now I know who she is, I can see the likeness strongly.  Yes; I should think that that would be the best way.  People often yield to a sudden impulse, who will resist if approached formally or from a distance.  But have you any reason to suppose that he will not receive her?  Did he refuse at first to undertake the charge of the child?  Does he even know that she is alive?  It may be that, all these years, he has been anxious to have her with him, and that you have been doing him injustice altogether.”

“I never thought of it in that light,” the sergeant said, after a pause.  “He never came near his son when he lay dying, never wrote a line in answer to his letters.  If a man could not forgive his son when he lay dying, how could he care for a grandchild he had never seen?”