“A Mr. Rangely, an Englishman, who is staying at the Leith Inn, was here to dinner to-night.  He has never been here before.”

“Austen Vane wasn’t here to-night?”

“Mr. Vane has never been in this house to my knowledge but once, and you knew more about that meeting than I do.”

And still Victoria spoke quietly, inexplicably so to Mr. Flint—­and to herself.  It seemed to her that some other than she were answering with her voice, and that she alone felt.  It was all a part of the nightmare, all unreal, and this was not her father; nevertheless, she suffered now, not from anger alone, nor sorrow, nor shame for him and for herself, nor disgust, nor a sense of injustice, nor cruelty—­but all of these played upon a heart responsive to each with a different pain.

And Mr. Flint, halted for the moment by her look and manner, yet goaded on by a fiend of provocation which had for months been gathering strength, and which now mastered him completely, persisted.  He knew not what he did or said.

“And you haven’t seen him to-day, I suppose,” he cried.

“Yes, I have seen him to-day.”

“Ah, you have!  I thought as much.  Where did you meet him to-day?”

Victoria turned half away from him, raised a hand to the mantel-shelf again, and lifted a foot to the low brass fender as she looked down into the fire.  The movement was not part of a desire to evade him, as he fancied in his anger, but rather one of profound indifference, of profound weariness—­the sunless deeps of sorrow.  And he thought her capable of deceiving him!  He had been her constant companion from childhood, and knew only the visible semblance of her face, her form, her smile.  Her sex was the sex of subterfuge.

“I went to the place where he is living, and asked for him,” she said, “and he came out and spoke to me.”

“You?” he repeated incredulously.  There was surely no subterfuge in her tone, but an unreal, unbelievable note which his senses seized, and to which he clung.  “You!  My daughter!”

“Yes,” she answered, “I, your daughter.  I suppose you think I am shameless.  It is true—­I am.”

Mr. Flint was utterly baffled.  He was at sea.  He had got beyond the range of his experience; defence, denial, tears, he could have understood and coped with.  He crushed the telegrams into a tighter ball, sought for a footing, and found a precarious one.

“And all this has been going on without my knowledge, when you knew my sentiments towards the man?”

“Yes,” she said.  “I do not know what you include in that remark, but I have seen him many times as many times, perhaps, as you have heard about.”