Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/190

182 was at the time young, under thirty. In token of his regret he has done much for me."

"I have been accustomed," said Arminell, "to look up to my father, and I have been full of a certain family pride—not pride in rank and wealth and all that sort of thing, but pride in the honour and integrity which I believed had been ours always; and now I find—" she sobbed; she could not finish her sentence.

"I am very sorry. I shall ever reproach myself," was the impotent remark of Jingles, but he did feel a sting of self-reproach. He had acted cruelly to kill a girl's trust in her father.

"It cannot be helped," she said, "it is done. Well, I know all, my eyes are opened, I accept you as my half-brother. When my father married again he sacrificed half his fatherhood in me, or so I felt it; and now of that half that remained something has been taken from me. Very little of my dear papa remains now—only a shadow."

"And I," said Jingles, "I am even in a worse plight than you, for I cannot love a father who has so wronged my mother." After a long pause, during which he held and fluttered a page of Arminell's music, he added, "What a forlorn condition mine is. I am here by sufferance who ought to be here by right. Every one dins in my ears the great kindness which I have had shown me by his lordship, and yet I know that I am not receiving more than a fraction of the portion that should be mine. Her ladyship patronises me, Giles regards me as a hired tutor, the servants are barely civil, the guests either ignore me or cast gibes, as—" he checked himself; he was again recurring to the half-shaved French poodle, when in at the door, or French window that led from the terrace, came Lord Lamerton, fresh and cheery.

"Saltren," he said, "you here! I am glad of that. The man I want; do me a favour, my good fellow, and be the