"Oh but--but," cried Elfrida, tragic-eyed, "you don't understand, my friend.

And these pretences of mine are unendurable--I won't make another.

This is the real reason why I can't go to your house: Janet knows -- everything there is to know.

I told her--I myself--in a fit of rage ten days ago, and then she said things and I said things, and--and there is nothing now between us any more!" Lawrence Cardiff looked grave.

"I am sorry for that," he said.
A middle-aged gentleman in apparently hopeless love does not confide in his grown-up daughter, and Janet's father had hardly thought of her seriously in connection with this new relation, which was to him so precarious and so sweet.