’I am not in the least tired, and if I were, do you think I could sleep with this half told?’

‘You said you knew.’

’Then it is only about Gillian being so silly as to go down to Miss White’s office at the works to look over the boy’s Greek exercises.’

‘You don’t mean that you allowed it!’

’No, Gillian’s impulsiveness, just like her mother’s, began it, as a little assertion of modern independence; but while she was away that little step from brook to river brought her to the sense that she had been a goose, and had used me rather unfairly, and so she came and confessed it all to me on the way home from the station the first morning after her return.  She says she had written it all to her mother from the first.’

‘I wonder Lily did not telegraph to put a stop to it.’

’Do you suppose any mother, our poor old Lily especially, can marry a couple of daughters without being slightly frantic!  Ten to one she never realised that this precious pupil was bigger than Fergus.  But do tell me what my Lady had heard, and how she heard it.’

’You remember that her governess, Miss Elbury, has connections in the place.’

’"The most excellent creature in the world.”  Oh yes, and she spent Sunday with them.  So that was the conductor.’

’I can hardly say that Miss Elbury was to be blamed, considering that she had heard the proposal about Valetta!  It seems that that High School class-mistress, Miss Mellon, who had the poor child under her, is her cousin.’

‘Oh dear!’

’It is exactly what I was afraid of when we decided on keeping Valetta at home.  Miss Mellon told all the Caesar story in plainly the worst light for poor Val, and naturally deduced from her removal that she was the most to blame.’

’Whereas it was Miss Mellon herself!  But nobody could expect Victoria to see that, and no doubt she is quite justified in not wishing for the child in her schoolroom!  But, after all, Valetta is only a child; it won’t hurt her to have this natural recoil of consequences, and her mother will be at home in three weeks’ time.  It signifies much more about Gillian.  Did I understand you that the gossip about her had reached those august ears?’

’Oh yes, Jane, and it is ever so much worse.  That horrid Miss Mellon seems to have told Miss Elbury that Gillian has a passion for low company, that she is always running after the Whites at the works, and has secret meetings with the young man in the garden on Sunday, while his sister carries on her underhand flirtation with another youth, Frank Stebbing, I suppose.  It really was too preposterous, and Victoria said she had no doubt from the first that there was exaggeration, and had told Miss Elbury so; but still she thought Gillian must have been to blame.  She was very nice about it, and listened to all my explanation most kindly, as to Gillian’s interest in the Whites, and its having been only the sister that she met, but plainly she is not half convinced.  I heard something about a letter being left for Gillian, and really, I don’t know whether there may not be more discoveries to come.  I never felt before the force of our dear father’s saying, apropos of Rotherwood himself, that no one knows what it is to lose a father except those who have the care of his children.’