The child advanced and shook hands politely, then stood still, staring at this unexpectedly acquired relative.

Her sharp-pointed face was so thin and small that her eyes, beneath their straight, dark brows, seemed to be enormous—­black, sombre eyes, having no kinship with the intense, opaque brown so frequently miscalled black, but suggestive of the vibrating darkness of night itself.

Instinctively the man’s glance wandered to the face of the child’s mother.

“You think her like me?” she hazarded.

“She is very like you,” he assented gravely.

A wry smile wrung her mouth.

“Let us hope that the likeness is only skin-deep, then!” she said bitterly.  “I don’t want her life to be—­as mine has been.”

“If,” he said gently, “if you will trust her to me, Pauline, I swear to you that I will do all in my power to save her from—­what you’ve suffered.”

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s all a matter of character,” she said nonchalantly.

“Yes,” he agreed simply.  Then he turned to the child, who was standing a little distance away from him, eyeing him distrustfully.  “What do you say, child!  You wouldn’t be afraid to come and live with me, would you?”

“I am never afraid of people,” she answered promptly.  “Except the man who comes for the rent; he is fat, and red, and a beast.  But I’d rather go on living with Mumsy, thank you—­Uncle.”  The designation came after a brief hesitation.  “You see,” she added politely, as though fearful that she might have hurt his feelings, “we’ve always lived together.”  She flung a glance of almost passionate adoration at her mother, who turned towards the man, smiling a little wistfully.

“You see how it is with her?” she said.  “She lives by her affections—­conversely from her mother, her heart rules her head.  You will be gentle with her, won’t you, when the wrench comes?”

“My dear,” he said, taking her hand in his and speaking with the quiet solemnity of a man who vows himself before some holy altar, “I shall never forget that she is your child—­the child of the woman I love.”

CHAPTER I

A MORNING ADVENTURE

The dewy softness of early morning still hung about the woods, veiling their autumn tints in broken, drifting swathes of pearly mist, while towards the east, where the rising sun pushed long, dim fingers of light into the murky greyness of the sky, a tremulous golden haze grew and deepened.

Little, delicate twitterings vibrated on the air—­the sleepy chirrup of awakening birds, the rustle of a fallen leaf beneath the pad of some belated cat stealing back to the domestic hearth, the stir of a rabbit in its burrow.

Presently these sank into insignificance beside a more definite sound—­the crackle of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath a heavier footfall than that of any marauding Tom, and through a clearing in the woods slouched the figure of a man, gun on shoulder, the secret of his bulging side-pockets betrayed by the protruding tail feathers of a cock-pheasant.