'No, mamma, the ship is not on fire. There is nothing wrong. I'm
so sorry I startled you. But Mr. Tottenham has been telling me all
about what you did for the soldiers the time plague broke out in the
lines at Mian-Mir. I think it was splendid, mamma, and so does he.'

'Oh, Lord!' I groaned. 'Good night.'



Chapter 1.IV.

It remained in my mind, that little thing that Dacres had taken the
trouble to tell my daughter; I thought about it a good deal. It
seemed to me the most serious and convincing circumstances that had
yet offered itself to my consideration. Dacres was no longer
content to bring solace and support to the more appealing figure of
the situation; he must set to work, bless him! to improve the
situation itself. He must try to induce Miss Farnham, by telling
her everything he could remember to my credit, to think as well of
her mother as possible, in spite of the strange and secret blows
which that mother might be supposed to sit up at night to deliver to
her. Cecily thought very well of me already; indeed, with private
reservations as to my manners and--no, NOT my morals, I believe I
exceeded her expectations of what a perfectly new and untrained
mother would be likely to prove. It was my theory that she found me
all she could understand me to be. The maternal virtues of the
outside were certainly mine; I put them on with care every morning
and wore them with patience all day. Dacres, I assured myself, must
have allowed his preconception to lead him absurdly by the nose not
to see that the girl was satisfied, that my impatience, my