“Do come and talk to me for a few moments!—­it will be so good of you!  The garden’s lovely!—­shall we go there?  Now, my dear Duke, don’t look so cross, I’ll bring her back to you directly!” and she nodded pleasantly.  “You want her, of course!—­everybody wants her!—­such a celebrity!” then, turning again to Innocent, “Will you come?”

As one in a dream the girl obeyed her inviting gesture, and they passed out of the room together through a large open French window to a terraced garden, dimly illumined in the distance by the glitter of fairy lamps, but for the most part left to the tempered brilliancy of a misty red moon.  Once away from the crowd, Lady Blythe walked quickly and impatiently, scarcely looking at the youthful figure that accompanied her own, like a fair ghost gliding step for step beside her.  At last she stopped; they were well away from the house in a quaint bit of garden shaded with formal fir-trees and clipped yews, where a fountain dashed up a slender spiral thread of white spray.  A strange sense of fury in her broke loose; with pale face and cruel, glittering eyes she turned upon her daughter.

“How dare you!” she half whispered, through her set teeth—­“How dare you!”

Innocent drew back a step, and looked at her steadfastly.

“I do not understand you,” she said.

“You do understand!—­you understand only too well!” and Lady Blythe put her hand to the pearls at her throat as though she felt them choking her.  “Oh, I could strike you for your insolence!  I wish I had never sought you out or told you how you were born!  Is this your revenge for the manner of your birth, that you come to shame me among my own class—­my own people—­”

Innocent’s eyes flashed with a fire seldom seen in their soft depths.

“Shame you?” she echoed.  “I?  What shame have I brought you?  What shame shall I bring?  Had you owned me as your child I would have made you proud of me!  I would have given you honour,—­you abandoned me to strangers, and I have made honour for myself!  Shame is yours and yours only!—­it would be mine if I had to acknowledge you as my mother!—­you who never had the courage to be true!” Her young voice thrilled with passion.—­“I have won my own way!  I am something beyond and above you!—­’your own class—­your own people,’ as you call them, are at my feet,—­and you—­you who played with my father’s heart and spoilt his career—­you have lived to know that I, his deserted child, have made his name famous!”

Lady Blythe stared at her like some enraged cat ready to spring.

“His name—­his name!” she muttered, fiercely.  “Yes, and how dare you take it?  You have no right to it in law!”

“Wise law, just law!” said the girl, passionately.  “Would you rather I had taken yours?  I might have done so had I known it—­ though I think not, as I should have been ashamed of any ‘maiden’ name you had dishonoured!  When you came to Briar Farm to find me—­ to see me—­so late, so late!—­after long years of desertion—­I told you it was possible to make a name;—­one cannot go nameless through the world!  I have made mine!—­independently and honestly—­ in fact”—­and she smiled, a sad cold smile—­“it is an honour for you, my mother, to know me, your daughter!”