laurence shortly found himself quite neglected as of considerably less interest : a circumstance which would have delighted him , if only it had not left him subject to awkward conversation with his father , who inquired stiltedly about emily 's mother : questions whose evasion would only have made laurence seem the more guilty , and yet whose perfectly truthful answers , that emily was the natural-born daughter of a jane roland , a gentlewoman living in dover , and whose education he had taken as his charge , left entirely the wrong impression , which laurence could no more correct than his father would outright ask .