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"Yes, I have also noticed this in Miss Affleck," the vicar said to her one day when she had been speaking to him on the subject. "She seemed at one time so docile, so teachable, so easy to be won, and now it is impossible not to see that there is something at work neutralising all our efforts and making her impervious to instruction. But, my dear Mrs.
Curiosity overcame the impulse to walk away, and stooping, she picked up the paper and smoothed it out and read, "From Miss Starbrow, Twickenham. To Miss Affleck, Dawson Place." She had not been to Twickenham, and had sent no telegram to Fan. Then she read the message and turned the paper over, and read it again and again, glancing at intervals at the girl.
"No, Miss Affleck, you have no sisters. Your father, Colonel Eden, had only one son, Mr. Arthur Eden, whom you know." "Colonel Eden! Mr. Arthur Eden!" she repeated, with a strange bewildered look. "Is he my brother Arthur Arthur!"
Eden was not yet satisfied with what he had heard, and as Merton seemed inclined to drop the subject, which was not what he wanted, he remarked tentatively: "How curious then that Miss Affleck should now be compelled to make her own living as a shop-assistant!" "Oh, you got that out of her!" exclaimed Merton, in a tone of undisguised annoyance.
It was something to marvel at, for towards herself they had shown such sweet kindliness in their manner; and she had felt that if it were only lawful she could love them both dearly, as one loves mother and sister. With a little hesitation she turned to Mrs. Churton and said, "Will you please call me Fan too? I like it so much better than Miss Affleck."
He also wrote his name in them, in each case with some old date; and finally, to make the deception complete, spilt a little ink over the cover of one volume, dropped some cigar-ash between the leaves of a second, and concealed a couple of old foreign letters on thin paper in a third. Then he tied them up together and sent them to her by a messenger with the following letter: DEAR MISS AFFLECK,
"Constance, will you give me your attention?" said her mother, turning to her. "Yes, mother, I am attending." "Miss Starbrow has informed us that Miss Affleck, although of gentle birth on her father's side, was unhappily left to be brought up in a very poor quarter of London, among people of a low class.
I advertised for Margaret Affleck; for I could not, of course, advertise for a child of whose existence there was not any evidence. But though we advertised a great many times both in the London and Norfolk papers Colonel Eden remembered that the girl belonged to Norfolk we could not find the right person.
But tell me this, Miss Affleck, and please do not be offended with me for asking so painful a question; but everything hinges on it. Are you the child of this Joseph Harrod your mother's husband?" She cast down her eyes.
The fashionable tide did not just then set very strongly towards the Gardens on Sundays, but he felt with some pride that he could safely appear anywhere in London with Miss Affleck at his side, and although his friends would not know her, they would never suspect that in her he had picked up one of the "lower orders."
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