“No-o—­not exactly.  With a friend of his mother’s, not her family.  Unfortunately, she had no family to speak of—­and mine is in England.  Neither of us had a soul here who really belonged to us.  That was just the difficulty.”

“It must have been a great difficulty,” murmured Alice, in a feeling tone.

“I believe you,” assented Guthrie, with emphasis.  “In fact, it put me into the most ridiculous hole, the most confounded fix—­one that I can’t for the life of me see my way out of; one that—­However, I mustn’t talk about it to you.  It’s not a thing that one ought to talk about to anybody.”

And yet he yearned to talk about it, and now, and to this particularly sympathetic woman, who was not young and giddy, but, like himself, experienced in the troubles of life, such as weighed him down.  There was “something about her” that irresistibly appealed to him, and he did not know what; but an author, who knows everything, knows exactly what it was.  It was the moonlight night.

A few words from her, backed by the nameless influences of the hour, unloosed his tongue.

“You mustn’t think me an unnatural parent,” he said.  “It’s not that at all.  I’m awfully fond of him.  I’ve got his photograph in my pocket—­ I’ll show it to you when we go in—­the last one for the time being.  I get a new one about every other mail, in all sorts of get-up, clothes and no clothes; but all as fat as butter, and grinning from ear to ear with the joy of life.  You never saw such a fetching little cuss.  I’d give anything to get hold of him—­if I could.”

“But surely—­his own father—­”

“No.  It sounds absurd to you, naturally; but that’s because you don’t understand the situation.”

“I can’t conceive of any situation—­”

“Of course not.  It’s a preposterous situation.  And I just drifted into it—­I don’t know how.  Oh, I do know—­it was for the child’s own sake; so that you really mustn’t call me a heartless parent any more, Miss Urquhart.  Nobody would do that who knew what I’d suffered for him.”  Mr Carey made a gesture, and sighed deeply.  “Even in the beginning it would have been difficult to get out of it, having once got in,” he continued, after a pause; “but it has been going on so long, getting worse and worse every day and every hour, till now I’m all tangled up like that moth in that spider’s web”—­pointing to a little insect tragedy going on beside them.

Miss Urquhart leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees, and spreading her hands in the enchanting moonlight, which made them look white as pearls—­and made her rather worn face look as if finely carved in ivory.  It was a graceful, thoughtful, confidential pose, and her eyes, uplifted, soft and kind, gleamed just under his eyes.

“I’m so sorry!” she murmured.  “But if I don’t know what the trouble is —­oh, don’t tell me if you’d rather not!—­I can’t help you, can I?  And I do wish I could!”