“I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane,” she went on, “I wish you might know him as I know him, if it were possible.  You see, I have been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities.  He makes no attempt to show his best side to the world.  His life has been spent in fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing.  He is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the morning to settle some little matter of justice.  I do not think I am betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to you.  He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he is trying to do.  Why don’t you come up and talk to him again?”

“I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance,” Austen replied, with mingled feelings.  Victoria’s confidence in her father made the situation all the more hopeless.

“I’m sure I don’t,” she answered quickly; “ever since—­ever since I first laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you.”

“Belief?” he echoed.

“Yes,” she said, “belief that—­that you had a future.  I can’t describe it,” she continued, the colour coming into her face again; “one feels that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into words.  And have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends with my father.”

Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which “accidental acquaintance” had melted into intimacy.  Austen’s blood ran faster, but it was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he was a Vane.  He had thought of her many times during the past year, but gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been so unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day.  He was not a man to lose his head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose his words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the sunlight beside him.

“I should like to be friends with your father,” he answered gravely,—­the statement being so literally true as to have its pathetically humorous aspect.

“I’ll tell him so, Mr. Vane,” she said.

Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.

“I must ask you as a favour not to do that,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“In the first place,” he answered quietly, “I cannot afford to have Mr. Flint misunderstand my motives.  And I ought not to mislead you,” he went on.  “In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at present, sometimes men’s views differ so sharply as to make intercourse impossible.  Your father and I might not agree—­politically, let us say.  For instance,” he added, with evident hesitation, “my father and I disagree.”