The garden chairs were near us. He signed to me gravely to be
seated by his side, and said to himself: "This is my fault."

"What is your fault?" I asked.

"I have left you in ignorance, my dear, of my cousin's sad story.
It is soon told; and, if it checks your merriment, it will make
amends by deserving your sympathy. I was indebted to her father,
when I was a boy, for acts of kindness which I can never forget.
He was twice married. The death of his first wife left him with
one child--once my playfellow; now the lady whose visit has
excited your curiosity. His second wife was a Belgian. She
persuaded him to sell his business in London, and to invest
the money in a partnership with a brother of hers, established
as a sugar-refiner at Antwerp. The little daughter accompanied
her father to Belgium. Are you attending to me, Helena?"

I was waiting for the interesting part of the story, and was
wondering when he would get to it.

"As time went on," he resumed, "the new partner found that
the value of the business at Antwerp had been greatly overrated.
After a long struggle with adverse circumstances, he decided on
withdrawing from the partnership before the whole of his capital
was lost in a failing commercial speculation. The end of it was
that he retired, with his daughter, to a small town in East
Flanders; the wreck of his property having left him with an
income of no more than two hundred pounds a year."

I showed my father that I was attending to him now, by inquiring