Fan glanced timidly at her again, her eyes brightening, a red colour
flushing her pale cheeks, and her lips quivering.

"You have an eloquent face--what do you wish to say?" asked the lady.

Fan still hesitated.

"Trust me, my poor girl, and I shall help you. Then is something in your
mind you would like to say."

Then Fan, losing all fear, said:

_"He_ was not my father--the man that married mother. My father was
a gentleman, but I don't know his name."

"I can very well believe it. Especially when I look at your eyes."

"Mother said my eyes were just like my father's," said Fan, with growing
confidence and a touch of pride.

"Perhaps they are like his in one way, my poor girl," said the other, a
little frown clouding her forehead. "In another way they are very
different, I should think. No one who ever did a cruel thing could have
had that expression in his eyes."

After sitting in silence for some time, still with that frown on her
beautiful face, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the tessellated floor,
she roused herself, and taking out her purse, gave Fan half-a-crown.