"Down again, Very!" cried the Doctor, a week later, as he came in from a
botanical ramble to breakfast. "Why, eh?--yes--no: it has been burned."
"Yes, papa: didn't you see the flames?"
"Not I. Slept like a top, and I went out through the sandpits and among
the fir trees this morning."
He hurried out of the French window, and out into the road, and looked
over the hedge into the park and then returned.
"Seems to have been splashed with petroleum or paraffin. Twice cut
down, and once burned. Well, somebody else does not like the hoarding."
"But, papa, you gave orders for it to be destroyed!"
"I? Hang it all, Very, am I the sort of man to do such a shabby thing?"
"No, papa: I beg your pardon."
"Granted, pet. Some one in the village thinks it's a paltry thing to
do, and has constituted himself our champion. Confound his insolence!
What did he say in his letter?"
"That if you dared to destroy his property, he would prosecute you,
papa," said Veronica.
"Yes, and he has sent me a summons."
"Oh, papa!"
"Fact, my dear; and I shall be puzzled as to how to defend myself and
prove my innocency. I say, Very, my dear, this looks bad for you."
The girl sighed, and bent over her cup.
"Wouldn't be a pleasant alliance, my dear, even if it could come off,"
continued the Doctor, watching his child furtively. "Ah, dear me! how
strangely things do work! Who'd have thought, when we landed in
England, that there was the heir to a baron bold waiting to go down on
bended knee to my little tyrant, and make her an offer of his heart and
hand?"
"Oh, papa, how you do delight in teasing me!"
"Teasing you? Well, isn't it a fact? You shot him through and through
first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble
servant ever since."
"But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the hoarding?"
"Well, I don't know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said
if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction."
"Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well."
"What, for getting rid of a nuisance?"
"No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount."
"Hah!" said the Doctor dreamily; "it's a strange world, Very. Perhaps
we had better go back to Iquique."
"Oh, papa!" cried the girl in dismay.
"Don't you want to go?"
"What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the
flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is
parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!"
"Humph!" said the Doctor--"always green. Don't seem so, Very:
something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate."
"I don't know what you mean, dear," said the girl consciously.
"Don't you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy,--I do not
mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I'm
not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England."
"I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England,
papa," said Veronica, as the breakfast went on.
"You wouldn't wonder, if you knew all," said the Doctor thoughtfully.
"All, papa?--all what?"
The Doctor was silent, and his child respected his silence. The
breakfast was ended, and the paper was thrown down.
"I don't see why you should not know, my dear. You are a woman now, and
thinking about such things."
Veronica looked across at him wonderingly.
"You asked me why I left England, or some such question. It was because
of the woman I loved, my dear."
"Mamma? To join her at Iquique?"
"No," said the Doctor thoughtfully; "it was before I knew of her
existence."
"Ah, papa!"
"Yes, my dear. I was desperately in love with a lady before I knew your
dear mother."
Veronica rose with wondering eyes, and knelt down beside her father,
resting her elbows on his knees and gazing up in his face.
"Do people--? You loved mamma very dearly, papa?" she whispered.
"Very, my child; and we were very happy till it pleased Heaven to take
her away. She taught a poor, weak, foolish man what a good woman really
is."