To get into her innermost confidence we must follow her to Naples on her half-term holiday and see for ourselves the peculiar circumstances amid which she had been placed, and the disadvantages that had caused her to differ from other girls.
Lorna's family was the smallest possible, for it consisted only of her father.

Nobody at the Villa Camellia had ever seen Mr.Carson--not even Miss Rodgers.

He had communicated with her by writing when he wished to place his daughter at the school, but he had never paid a single visit to Fossato.

He pleaded stress of business as the excuse for this remissness, but Lorna herself knew only too well that he had no intention of coming.

Except to the office at which he was employed he never went to any place where he would be likely to meet English visitors.