Dear Uncle Peter! He had told her once what Jack had said about her--how beautiful he thought her and how he loved her devotion to her father.

Jack MUST have said it, for Uncle Peter never spoke anything but the exact truth.

Then why had Jack, and everything else, changed so cruelly?
she would say--talking to herself, sometimes aloud.

For the ring had gone from his voice and the tenderness from his touch.

Not that he ever was tender, not that she wanted him to be, for that matter; and then she would shut her door and throw herself on her bed in an agony of tears--pleading a headache or fatigue that she might escape her father's inquiry, and often his anxious glance.
The only ray of light that had pierced her troubled heart--and this only flashed for a brief moment--was the glimpse she had had of Jack's mind when he and her father first met.