“A very smiling martyr, pretending to be awfully jolly.  I believe I requited papa by being very cross.”

“At his interfering, eh?  No wonder.”

“Chiefly to conceal my fright, but I did begin trying not to fly out as I used to do, and I was frightened whenever I did so.”

“Poor Daisy!  That is why you always seemed to think every headache your fault.”

“The final effect-—I won’t say cure-—was from that book on education which said that a child should never know a cross word or look between father and mother.  So you really have forgotten how horrid I could be?”

“Or never felt it!  But to return to our muttons.  I can’t believe otherwise than that Cherry liked her old man, and if their parallel lines did not meet, she never found it out.”

“That is true.  She liked him and leant on him, and was constantly pleased and amused as well as idolized, but I don’t think the deep places in her heart were stirred.  Then there were constraints.  He could not stand Angela’s freaks.  And his politics-—”

“He was not so very much advanced.”

“Enough not to like the ‘Pursuivant’ to lie about, nor her writing for it, even about art or books; nor did his old bones enjoy the rivers at Vale Leston.  Now you will see a rebound.”

“Or will she be too tender of him to do what he disliked?”

“That will be the test.  Now she has Clement, I expect an article will come on the first book they read together.”

Lance laughed, but returned to defend his sister.

“Indeed she was attached to him.  She was altogether drooping and crushed at Vale Leston in the autumn.”

“It was too soon.  She was overdone with the multitudes, and in fact it was more the renewal of the old sorrow than the new one.  Anna tells me that when they returned there was the same objectless depression.  She would not take up her painting again, she said it was of no use, there was no one to care.  I remember her being asked once to do something for the Kyrle Society, and Mr. Grinstead did not like it, but now Clement’s illness has made a break, and in a new place, with him to occupy her instead of only that dawdling boy, you will see what you shall see!”

“Ah!  Gerald!” was the answer, in a doubtful, wistful tone, just as they arrived.

CHAPTER IV.  SLUM, SEA, OR SEASON

For in spite of all her mother had taught her,
She was really remarkably fond of the water. 
                                       Jane Taylor.

Mr. and Mrs. Lancelot Underwood had not long been gone to their meeting when there ran into the drawing-room a girl a year older than Anna, with a taller, better figure, but a less clear complexion, namely Emilia, the adopted child of Mr. Travis Underwood.  She found Anna freshening up the flowers, and Gerald in an arm-chair reading a weekly paper.