Marcia realised that her words had brought him acute suffering. There were tears in her eyes as she took his hand.

"Don't be silly about this, Reginald dear," she pleaded. "If it means so much to you to feel--I mean, if you look upon this money as really a tie between us--give me a little less, then--say three hundred a year, instead of six."

Her visitor was recovering his momentarily disturbed composure.

"You are still nothing but a child in money matters, dear," he said. "We will speak of this again before the end of the year, but in the meantime, if you have anything to spare, invest it. It is always well for a woman to have something to fall back upon."

Tea was brought in, and their conversation for a time became lighter in tone. Presently, however, Marcia became once more a little thoughtful.

"I have made up my mind," she declared abruptly, "to go down to Mandeleys to see my father."

The Marquis was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, why not, if you really feel it to be your duty," he conceded. "Personally, I think you will find that Vont is unchanged. You will find him just as hard and narrow as when he disowned you."

"In that case," Marcia acknowledged, "I shall not trouble him very much, but when I think of all these years abroad--it was through me he left England, you know, Reginald--I feel that I ought to do my best, at any rate, to make him see things differently--to beg his forgiveness with my lips, even if I feel no remorse in my heart. I have a most uncomfortable conviction," she went on reflectively, "that I have grown completely out of his world, but, of course, in all this time he, too, may have changed. I wonder what has become of my little cousin."

"Vont came back alone, I believe," her visitor told her, "and he came back second class, too. I heard of him, curiously enough, from an American gentleman who crossed on the same steamer, and who happened to be a guest at my house the other night."

Marcia nodded.

"The boy left England too young," she remarked, "to miss his country. I suppose he has settled down in America for ever."

"I must say that I wish Vont had stayed with him," the Marquis declared. "Yes, go down and see him, by all means, 

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