The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sydney Lisle: The Heiress of St. Quentin, by Dorothea Moore.

A rainy November afternoon was drawing to its close. The sun had set in a haze of fog, to which it gave a fleeting warmth of colour. The street lamps were lit, and chinks of light showed here and there through the shuttered windows of the tall, dingy houses in a dull old square not far from Euston Station.

Yes, chinks of light were coming from almost every house, casting little gleams of brightness on to the wet pavements and rusty iron bars guarding the areas; but from one, the last in the square, considerably more was to be seen.

Uncertain blobs of light, now broad, now narrow, from the windows of the dining-room, suggested that the curtains were being drawn back impatiently every few minutes, that someone [8] might look out into the uninviting darkness; and at least three times in one half-hour a broad blaze streaming out into the night assured the passers-by that the hall door of Number 20 had been opened wide, despite the fog and rain.

If they had paused at such a moment they might have seen a slender figure, with brown hair blown away from her bright face, and eager eyes that searched the familiar square, regardless of the cold, until a call from within made her slowly close the door and return into the brightness that looked doubly bright after the darkness without.

“Father and Hugh won’t come any the quicker because you send a draught right through the house, dear!” a pleasant-looking girl of two or three-and-twenty remarked, as Sydney came dancing and singing into the shabby school-room after her third unsuccessful journey to the door; “they are hardly ever in before half-past five, you know.”

“It feels like half-past six, at least!” cried Sydney. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! I’ve never known half-past five so awfully long in coming!”

“Sydney! Sydney!” Mildred said reprovingly, “don’t you remember what mother was [9] saying to you only yesterday? You really must give up slang and schoolgirl ways, now you are going to be eighteen next month, and to put your hair up, and leave off doing proper lessons and——”

“And become a real, celebrated authoress!” shouted Tom, who was despatching bread and butter at the table with a highly satisfactory appetite. “You’ll have to mind your shaky grammar now, Syd.”

“Of course I shan’t be a celebrated authoress quite at once,” said Sydney modestly. “I believe you are usually rather more grown up than eighteen first, and have a little more experience. But it makes one feel ever so much older when one is really going to be in print.”

“And when you’ve earned a whole guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!” little Prissie contributed in an absolutely awestruck voice.

“Read us the letter again, Syd,” Hal demanded, stretching out his long legs to the cheerful blaze. “Go ahead; I really don’t think I took it all in.”

And Sydney, nothing loth, produced that wonderful letter, which had come in quite an ordinary way by the four o’clock post that afternoon, together with an advertisement about a dairy-farm for mother, and an uninteresting-looking [10] envelope for father, with “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the back.

The outside of her letter was quite ordinary-looking too, Sydney had thought, when Fred and Prissie had almost torn the envelope in half, in their anxiety each to have the pleasure of bringing it upstairs to her. Just a narrow envelope, with something stamped upon the back, and her name in very scrawly hand-writing—“Miss Sydney Lisle.”

And then, when she had turned it over several times, and all the Chichester children who were in had had a look at it, and tried to guess what the raised and twisted letters on the back might mean, Sydney had opened it.

And there was a typed letter, and inside the letter a cheque for a guinea—actually a guinea, the largest sum Sydney had ever owned in the course of her seventeen years! She never will forget the wonder and delight of that moment!

“It’s a guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!” she had told the wildly-excited Madge and Fred and Prissie. “The Editor of Our Girls has sent it to me. He is going to print my story in the next week’s issue, and he calls me ‘Madam’!”

This was the astounding news which was [11] told afresh to every member of the Chichester family as he or she set foot inside the door, and which made the hands of the school-room clock stand still to Sydney, as she waited for Dr. Chichester and Hugh to come in from the hospital and hear it.

How surprised father would be, and what a lovely new fountain pen she would buy for him! And Hugh—Hugh was always so specially pleased when anything nice happened to Sydney! She would get Hugh to take her out and help her to choose presents for everyone out of that wonderful guinea, which seemed as inexhaustible as Fortunatus’s purse.

Father and mother ( what a present mother should have!), and Mildred—Mildred wanted a new pair of gloves; she should have suède, the very best. And Hal and Dolly and Tom—Tom should have the bicycle-lamp he was longing for, in spite of his remark about her grammar; and Madge and Ronald and dear little Freddie and Prissie, oh, what a doll she would get for Prissie! with real eyelashes and hair that you could brush! And old nurse must have a present, too, and Susan the cook. And Hugh—Hugh should have the very best present of anybody’s, after mother.

So absorbed was she in these thoughts that [12] she never heard the front door open and the steps, which she had been waiting for so long, come down the passage to the school-room.

The watched pot had boiled the minute that she took her eyes from it: Hugh Chichester was standing in the doorway looking at her.

“Oh, Hugh!” She was at his side in a moment, and pouring out the great news in words that would hardly come fast enough to please her.

He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down—such a long way he had to look from his six feet two inches—at her glowing face.

“Three cheers for Miss Lisle, the celebrated authoress!” yelled Tom, rising from his chair and waving his tea-cup. The toast was received with enthusiasm.

“Only I wish it were ‘Miss Chichester,’” said Ronald; “it’s so silly for old Syd to have a different name!”

“Oh, well, she can’t help that,” Tom contributed; “and her father and mother gave her to us, so it’s just the same.”

“Yes, she’s ours right enough,” said Hugh, [13] putting his arm round his “little sister,” as Sydney Lisle would have called herself.

And then, quite suddenly, Dr. Chichester’s voice was heard calling “Sydney! Sydney!”

“There’s father calling; mother must have told him!” Sydney cried, and, gathering together her precious cheque and letter, she rushed out like a whirlwind.

“The pater is in the drawing-room, Syd,” Hugh called after her; “he just took up his letters and went straight in there to mother,” he added, for the others’ benefit. Sydney was already out of hearing, and only echoes of her fresh young voice came floating back to them, as she ran down the long back passage and up the stairs through the hall to the drawing-room.

Mildred stooped to pick up the mending-basket which Sydney’s energetic movements had swept off her knee. “I wonder whether Sydney ever will grow up!” she said.

“Well, she’s right enough as she is,” said Hugh, at last beginning on his long-delayed tea.

Sydney’s merry voice was hushed as she came into the drawing-room, for mother did not like [14] boisterous ways, and father might be tired. But, though her feet moved soberly, her eyes were dancing as she held out the precious letter to the doctor, standing by the window.

What made him look so old and strange? And surely mother’s head was bent down low above her work to hide her tears! Sydney stopped short, with an exclamation of dismay.

Father grasped a letter in a hand that shook. Vaguely she saw that the crumpled envelope had “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the back. It was the letter which had come with hers at four o’clock that afternoon!

The hall clock heralded the striking of six by a variety of strange wheezing sounds: when it had slowly tinged away the six strokes, father spoke.

CHAPTER II
HER OWN PEOPLE

Half an hour had gone by—the very longest half hour in Sydney’s happy life; and there was silence in the drawing-room.

Father had been speaking, but he was silent now, standing with his face turned towards the shuttered windows. On the floor knelt Sydney, her head on mother’s knee. She was not crying—this calamity seemed too great for tears—tears such as had been shed over the untimely fate of Prissie’s bullfinch, or the sewing up by father of that dreadful cut in Ronald’s cheek. Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs, but no tears came.

“My little girl,” mother was speaking, with a gentle hand on the untidy brown head on her knee, “my poor little girl!”

“Oh, mother, you will let me stay your little girl! I can’t go away. Oh, mother, you always said I was given to you!”

“See here, my little Sydney,” he said. “God knows you can’t cease to be our child to us, as you have been for these seventeen years. If it were acting rightly to keep you, do you suppose your mother and I could consent to let our little girl go from us? Still, we have got to do the right thing; and when your poor young father gave you to us, he had no idea of your ever coming near the title. But now this accident to your cousin, Lord St. Quentin, makes you heiress to it, so your cousin’s man of business writes to tell me. Lord St. Quentin wants you, and, my little girl, you must go.”

“Couldn’t I say I don’t want to be a marchioness?” poor Sydney asked despairingly; “isn’t there anybody else to be one instead?”

Dr. Chichester shook his grey head sadly; Mr. Fenton’s letter had been clear enough on that point. There was a complete failure of heirs male: and, in the House of Lisle, the female had the power, in such a case, to inherit land and title.

Dr. Chichester knew this as a fact, though he had thought about it very little. There had been nothing to bring it very prominently before him in the seventeen years that had [17] passed since he promised to be a father to the little motherless daughter of his dying patient, Lord Francis Lisle.

The doctor had come across many sad things in the course of his professional experience, but nothing much sadder than the sight he had seen one cold December day in the little bare bedroom of a miserable lodging-house off Pentonville. He was attending the more urgent cases of a sick friend, and in this way came across Lord Francis and his girl wife. She was lying in the meagre bed, with her young husband fanning her, and a tiny wailing baby at her side.

It was not the first time that Doctor Chichester’s wife had come to bring help to her husband’s poorer patients: she went daily to the little dingy lodging off Pentonville, while the young wife lingered, as though loth to leave the boy-husband who stood watching her with great, sad eyes. The good doctor and his wife soon heard their pitiful little story.

Sydney Henderson had but just left school when she went as governess to the little boy and girl of Lady Braemuir, niece to the Marquess of St. Quentin. It was a big, gay house; but the little governess, playing nursery games with her charges, saw little of the [18] company till Lady Braemuir’s youngest cousin, Lord Francis, came to shoot the Braemuir grouse before joining his regiment.

The children were full of “Tousin Fwank” before he came. He had stayed at Braemuir six months previously. When he came, the reason of their interest in his arrival became speedily apparent. Francis Lisle was perfectly devoted to children, with a genuine devotion that made mothers beam upon him.

He was known in the nurseries of many a big house: he made himself at home in the school-room of his little cousins.

Lady Braemuir laughed at him and his “childish tastes,” but never said a word upon the subject to the little governess, hardly more than a child herself, until a day when, coming home from a tennis-party tired and cross, she heard laughter issuing from the school-room, where Lord Francis, who had declined going to the party, was found sharing his little cousins’ tea.

Forgetful of everything but irritation, Lady Braemuir spoke cruelly to the girl, who knew so little of the duties of a governess. Lord Francis bore her remarks in silence for a minute, then the frightened appeal in the childish eyes overcame his prudence.

“Excuse me, Gwenyth,” he said sternly; “there is no need to say any more upon this subject. I am going to ask Miss Henderson if she will be my wife.” And he did.

“I wash my hands of the whole business!” Lady Braemuir said. “Frank must explain as best he can to Uncle St. Quentin.”

Until that time his fourth and youngest son had been Lord St. Quentin’s favourite—this bright, handsome boy, who had made half the sunshine of his home. He was proud of him, too, and looked to see him do well in the army, and prove an honour to the name he bore. The pride of the old marquess was far greater than his love.

“Going to marry a clergy-orphan and a governess!” Frank’s father cried. “Then you won’t get a penny of mine to help you make a fool of yourself! Do it, if you choose; but in that case never darken my doors again!”

The little governess had no near relations, and the young couple were married almost immediately. He was twenty-two and she was eighteen.

He gave up the army and obtained a clerkship in a house of business in London. But [20] the salary was small, and, strive as they would, they could not live within their income.

She tried to do a little teaching to add to it; but her health was delicate and pupils hard to get. Their small reserve fund melted fast, though Lord Francis worked long after office hours at odd jobs for the sake of the few extra shillings that they brought him.

Hard work and poor living brought their usual consequence. When Dr. Chichester broke it very gently to the young husband that there was no getting better for Sydney, he was aware that the two would not probably be parted long.

When the young mother died one grey December morning, with her head upon her husband’s shoulder, Mrs. Chichester carried home the baby to her own fast-filling nursery, where sturdy seven-year-old Hugh took at once to “his baby,” as he called her, to distinguish her from red-faced Ronald in the cradle, whose advent had meant so many “hushings” at times when he wished to make a noise.

Under Mrs. Chichester’s tender care the little wizened baby girl grew fat and merry, crowing courageously even when Hugh staggered round the room with her held in too tight a clasp.

Her young father used to come round to the tall dingy house in the dull old square, when office hours were over, and sit beside the nursery fire, watching Mrs. Chichester, as she put the babies to bed, with an oft-repeated game with the ten bare pink toes of the child upon her knee.

His little daughter learned to know him, and to crow and laugh when he came into the nursery and held out his arms for her. He began to look forward to the time when she would learn to call him “Father,” but that was not to be.

Easter came late, in the spring following little Sydney’s birth, with hot sun and bitter winds.

Dr. Chichester had never had so many cases of pneumonia to attend, and one day a scrawl from Lord Francis’s lodgings told of illness there. He hurried round to find little Sydney’s father in high fever. There was from the first small chance of his recovery, as his strength was not sufficient to fight illness. He would have been altogether glad to go, if it had not been for the thought of his baby girl.

“My people cast me off completely,” he said, one day, when the end was near, “and they are not at all likely to receive my child.”

“My dear boy,” said the doctor, “don’t you worry. We couldn’t part with the little lassie now; if I would, my wife wouldn’t. Give her to us, and she shall be our child. She has our love already, and, God helping us! she shall have a happy home.”

“I can’t thank you,” Lord Francis had said hoarsely; and the doctor had said “Don’t!”

Dr. Chichester had written to the poor boy’s eldest brother, who had now become the marquess, telling him that Frank was dying; but no notice had been taken of the letter. Lord Francis was laid beside his wife in the cemetery, and little Sydney grew from babyhood to childhood and from childhood to girlhood, with nothing but the difference of surname and the occasional telling of an old story with the saddest parts left out, to remind her that she was not a Chichester by birth.

That unknown mother and father, of whom this real living, loving mother told her at times seemed part of a story, not her own life, and the story always ended with the comfortable words: “Your father gave our dear little girl to us, to be our child for always!”

I think perhaps Dr. and Mrs. Chichester [23] forgot too very often that Sydney bore another name from theirs, for though the doctor certainly read in the papers of the tragic death while mountain-climbing of Lord Herbert Lisle, “second son of the late Marquess of St. Quentin,” he hardly realised Lord Herbert to be little Sydney’s uncle; nor did her relationship occur to him when, some four years later, Lord Eric, “the third son, etc., etc.,” fell a victim to malarial fever when travelling in Italy.

The papers took considerably more interest in the matter, and there were discreetly hinted fears expressed in them lest the old title should die out for lack of heirs. The present marquess was in feeble health, and his only child, Lord Lisle, unmarried. Lord Herbert had been also unmarried, and Lord Eric a childless widower. Regret was expressed that Lord Lisle possessed neither brother nor sister. It was then the doctor realised that in this House, in default of heirs male of the direct line, females had the power to inherit land and title.

He looked at long-legged, short-frocked Sydney with a sudden anxiety, and for a few weeks actually glanced down the “Personal and Social” column of The Standard in the hope of his eye falling on—“A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place [24] between Viscount Lisle, only son of the Marquess of St. Quentin, and ...,” some damsel of high degree. But before long he forgot the matter in the press of daily life, and five years had passed peacefully away without anything happening to remind him of the House of Lisle or its connection with his little Sydney.

Lord St. Quentin, as Lord Lisle had become through his father’s death four years ago, had met with a fearful motor-accident, in which he had sustained some internal injury, from which the doctors feared there was no recovery. He might linger on for months, but the end was certain, and he was unmarried.

Sydney Lisle had been ignored by her father’s family for nearly eighteen years; but their man of business had known where to find her. It was he who wrote to Dr. Chichester, requesting that he would resign his guardianship of Miss Lisle into the hands of the cousin whose heir she had now become, the Marquess of St. Quentin.

“We shall have to let her go,” the doctor had said, as he and Mrs. Chichester read Mr. Fenton’s letter together. “The child was [25] never put legally into my charge: I only took her at that poor boy’s expressed wish. Mr. Fenton writes very sensibly, and tells me that Lord St. Quentin’s maternal aunt, Lady Frederica Verney, is to be at St. Quentin Castle, and will take care of the child. And of course she will have advantages we have no power to give her.”

Mr. Fenton proposed calling upon Dr. Chichester that evening, and, if quite convenient, would be glad to see Miss Lisle. Hence the speed with which the news had been broken to the girl.

But when the lawyer came, an elderly man with old-fashioned grey whiskers and keen, kindly eyes, he had to do without a sight of the poor little heiress to the title of St. Quentin. For Sydney had gone to bed with an overpowering headache, and was fit for nothing but to lie still in the dark, with eau-de-cologne on her forehead and mother’s hand, idle for once, clasped tightly in both hers.

Perhaps it was as well, for she was spared not only the lawyer’s visit, but the telling of the dreadful story to the others—the children’s questions, and what she would have minded more, the sight of Hugh’s face, first fierce and then very white.

But she cried herself to sleep upstairs, while Mr. Fenton in the drawing-room was inflicting on the silent doctor a description of the “splendid position” to which his little Sydney, the child who had been as his own for nearly eighteen long years, had been called.

He suddenly broke in upon the lawyer’s well-turned phrases, leaning forward and speaking almost roughly to him.

“You tell me of the age of the title—of the magnificence of the castle—I don’t want to hear all that! There is only one thing that I want to know—my little girl, will they be good to her? Will she be happy?”

Mr. Fenton considered this question for some minutes before answering it. When he came to think of it, it was not such a very easy one to answer.

“Miss Lisle will have, I trust, every reason to be happy,” he replied at length; “every advantage will be hers, and a splendid, yes, undoubtedly, a splendid position.”

CHAPTER III
UPROOTED

The train lamps had been lit two hours ago, and cast a vivid, unshaded light upon a comfortable first-class railway carriage, with its well-stuffed seats, well-covered floors, and tasselled blinds shutting out the winter darkness.

Even particular Mr. Fenton thought the light good enough to read by, and was leaning back luxuriously in his corner of the carriage, immersed in the Westminster Gazette .

But Sydney, who sat opposite him, could not read. A pile of magazines considered by Mr. Fenton to suit her age and sex lay around her, and she was idly turning up the pages of one on her knee. But her eyes were fixed dreamily upon the wall before her, and her thoughts were leagues away from the swiftly-moving train, which was carrying her ever nearer and nearer to the new, strange life.

It did not seem possible that she could be the same Sydney who, only a week ago, had been so wildly happy over the letter from the Editor of Our Girls . Why, though six copies of the paper with her story in it had arrived for her, “With the compliments of the Editor,” that morning, she had not even looked at them. No one had cared: all that happiness and excitement had been years and years ago!

The days seemed all too short for everything she wanted to do in them. In the end she had done little except follow mother round the house, from kitchen to larder, from larder to store-room, and from store-room to linen-cupboard. The idea of going round to say good-bye to all her friends had to be given up; after all, it was mother that she wanted most.

At night she and Dolly, who shared a room, used to hold to each other and cry; but in the daytime Sydney shed few tears. She was very quiet and wistful-eyed, but trustful of father’s judgment, only growing a little more silent as the days went on.

There came a letter from Lady Frederica Verney, Lord St. Quentin’s aunt, beginning, “Dear Miss Lisle,” which opening was in itself [29] a shock, and asking Sydney if she would be ready to come to Castle St. Quentin on Tuesday next, under the escort of Mr. Fenton. A maid, whom Lady Frederica had engaged to wait upon her, would come up to town the day before, spend the night at an hotel, and meet Sydney at Waterloo in time for the two o’clock train down to Blankshire.

Nobody in the Chichester household could quite see what use the maid could be to Sydney on the journey; but, by mother’s orders, she wrote a little note to Lady Frederica, thanking her for taking so much trouble, and saying that she would be ready to go with Mr. Fenton on the day and by the train suggested.

The first copy of that note had two blots upon it, and Sydney had to write it again. Poor little heiress! she quite longed to hear Mildred say, “How careless!” and “When will you grow up, Sydney!” But there were no scoldings now, only a great tenderness from one and all.

Then there was packing to be done, and great discussions whether the frocks which were to have been “let down” next month when Sydney’s hair went up, should be altered now. Would Lady Frederica expect to see [30] Miss Lisle in quite grown-up array, or would skirts to her ankles pass muster?

Sydney took very little interest in the discussion, only, when pressed, gave her voice in favour of leaving them alone. “She hated everything that reminded her of what was going to happen!” she said.

The children took the prospect cheerfully until the very end. Nurse had enlightened them on the grandeur of a title. “Miss Sydney would ride in her own carriage, pretty dear! with powdered footmen on the box, and silver on the harness, and wear satin every day. It would do her old eyes good to see her!”

“You needn’t be such a silly ass about it, Syd,” Freddie had said, after one of nurse’s conversations. “ I don’t mind you being a Lady-what-do-you-call-it myself! You’ll keep lots of horses and ponies and merry-go-rounds in your park, and we’ll all come and stay with you and ride ’em!”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Hugh told him, rather savagely, and was not greatly mollified by Freddie’s answer:

“Well, you needn’t! But Syd’s promised to ask me and Prissie, haven’t you, Syd?”

“Oh, I shall want you all!” poor Sydney had cried. “I do hope Lord St. Quentin will [31] be kind, and ask you all to come and stay soon, very soon!”

“No chance of that!” Hugh had muttered beneath his breath; and then had put his arm round Sydney, calling himself “a beast to make her cry, and, of course, they would meet again, yes, very soon indeed!”

And then had come the last evening of the old happy, childish life. Hugh had been very white and silent as it drew on, and Mildred’s eyes kept filling with tears, so that she could not see to work, and Dolly was crying quietly in a corner, and the boys gave up talking about the hunters Sydney would keep and the motor-cars she would drive, and relapsed into a gloomy silence; and Fred and Prissie realised suddenly what “good-bye” meant, and broke down and howled.

Perhaps that was rather a good thing, after all, for everybody was so busy comforting them and making auguries of future meetings that there was not very much time to be miserable.

And when one is not yet eighteen, one is sleepy when ten o’clock comes round, however wretched one may be feeling. Sydney fully expected to lie awake all night, but she and Dolly were both sound asleep when father and mother looked, shading their candle, into the [32] small room where to-morrow night one would be all alone.

They all had a kind of Sunday-manner towards the one who was to leave them. Mother packed for Sydney; Mildred mended her gloves so beautifully that one could not see where the mend was; old nurse came and brushed out the mane of fine brown hair, combed back loosely from the small face and tied at the back of the neck with ribbon; and Freddie rushed out to the nearest flower-shop to buy her a bunch of violets to wear on the journey. He even bore with calmness the hug with which she received them, though in general he objected strongly to such demonstrations from anyone but mother.

Father was to take her to the station, and she had her last words with mother in her little bedroom.

“Be a good girl, my darling, and try as well to be a cheerful one. I know this is a hard thing for you, but God doesn’t call us to do anything that is too hard for us. Be brave, my little Sydney, and make the best , in every sense, of this new life. God bless you, my darling!”

“I will try, mother,” said poor Sydney, [33] choking back her tears, and then father called that the cab had come, and mother put the girl’s hat straight, and down they went.

The hat grew rather disarranged again in the hall over the various embracings; but Sydney did not feel as though that or anything else mattered. Somehow she stumbled, blinded with tears, to the cab, and waved a farewell to the crowd of dear faces round the well-known door. Then father said “Right—Waterloo!” and away they drove.

The hot tears rose again to Sydney’s eyes, as she recalled the scene, and blurred the page before her. Not four hours since she had said good-bye to home, but oh, how long it seemed!

The drive had been short enough; Sydney thought she would have liked to go on driving for ever, holding father’s hand, and dreamily watching blobs of mud fly up against the cab windows.

But Waterloo was reached very soon, and Mr. Fenton was outside upon the station steps, and coming forward to hand her from the cab, and regret that she had so dull a day for her journey, and wave forward a fashionably-attired personage, whom Sydney took for some distinguished traveller; but who was, it appeared, her maid, “Ward.”

Poor Sydney faltered, “How do you do?” in her shyest tone, and felt supremely young and miserable. However, if Miss Lisle did not know what to do with her maid, her maid knew perfectly well what to do with her. She took Sydney’s umbrella, and inquired for her dressing-case. “I haven’t one,” the heiress faltered, holding tight to father’s hand.

Ward was too well-bred to be at all surprised. She just said, “Certainly, Miss Lisle,” and walked behind her to the carriage, where Mr. Fenton had already ordered rugs and hot-water tins. She inquired if she could get Miss Lisle anything, and, on a refusal, remarked that she was travelling in the back part of the train, and would come to Miss Lisle at Donisbro’. Sydney murmured, “Thank you very much,” and Ward, with a courtly bend of her head, departed.

Mr. Fenton considerately said something rather inaudible about “papers,” and left father and daughter for that precious last five minutes, and then, after all, Sydney could not find anything to say, but could only stand mutely holding to the worn cuff of his shabby overcoat and looking at him with great, hungry eyes.

Dr. Chichester had to blow his nose more than once in the course of that five minutes. [35] “There, there, my dear!” he kept on saying, “things will look brighter presently.... Be a good girl ... and write to us ... you’ll like getting our letters, won’t you?... And I expect this Lady Frederica will spoil you famously, eh, my dear?... There, there! don’t cry; it won’t be as bad as you think, my little girl!”

And then Mr. Fenton gave a nervous little cough behind him, and said he was afraid the train was just due to start, and Dr. Chichester apologised for blocking up the doorway, and kissed Sydney, and said to Mr. Fenton, in a rather husky voice, “Be good to my little girl, sir.”

And Mr. Fenton looked a little frightened, and said, “Yes, yes, you may rely upon me; I will make a point of it.” And then a guard yelled, “Stand clear, sir!” and the train was moving.

And Sydney had stood up and waved her handkerchief till the long platform, with the tall, slightly stooping figure, was quite out of sight—the last of home!

The letters on the page danced wildly and then disappeared, as Sydney’s meditations reached this point. She got her handkerchief out furtively. It certainly was not being very [36] brave or sensible to cry at her age. She dried her tears, and found Mr. Fenton looking at her in an anxious manner over the top of his newspaper.

He had looked at her several times while her thoughts were travelling so far away. He felt a distinct sense of responsibility with regard to her, but was handicapped by small knowledge of girls and their ways.

He had done all that he could think of for her comfort. He had provided her with a perfect armful of ladies’ papers, wrapped a travelling rug about her knees, felt her hot-water tin to learn if it were really hot, asked her more than once if he should completely close the window, and seen to it that she had a cup of tea at Donisbro’.

But still he felt a vague uneasiness—a fear that he had not done everything that he might have done. The girl’s eyes were very wistful—the dark grey Lisle eyes, which he had noticed with professional interest. They filled with tears rather often. Mr. Fenton felt distinctly uneasy—he hoped the girl was not going to be hysterical!

She saw him looking at her, and forced a rather pathetic little smile. Mr. Fenton put down his paper, folded it, and leaned forward.

“We shall be at Dacreshaw in less than twenty minutes,” he informed her, looking at his watch. She thanked him, and then took a sudden resolution, “Mr. Fenton, may I ask you a question?”

“I don’t know anything about my cousin,” she said, looking up at him appealingly; “will he—will he be kind, do you think?”

Mr. Fenton rubbed his hands together in a considering kind of way. “I do not think that you will see a great deal of Lord St. Quentin,” he said. “Since his accident he has lived entirely in two rooms on the ground floor—no, I don’t think you will see him very often.”

“And Lady Frederica?” ventured Sydney. “You told father that Lord St. Quentin is thirty-four, so I suppose his aunt is very very old?”

Mr. Fenton never laughed outright at anything [38] a lady said to him, but he did smile, a little, half-apologetic smile, at Sydney’s question.

“My dear Miss Lisle, ladies nowadays are never old, and it is particularly difficult to connect that ungallant expression with Lady Frederica. She is quite a woman of the world, I assure you, and—but you will find out all about her for yourself. Ah! here is the train stopping at Dacreshaw Station. Now, my dear young lady, we only have a drive of six miles, and then we shall have reached our journey’s end!”

A footman in a long drab coat with silver buttons was opening the carriage door with a touch of his cockade to Sydney; Ward was hurrying towards her from the second-class compartments of the train; the old station-master was lifting his gold-banded cap as she went by. Sydney believed, in thinking over her arrival afterwards, that she clung in a very undignified way to the arm Mr. Fenton had offered her, with his old-fashioned gallantry. She was thankful when they reached the shelter of the brougham sent to meet her, and Mr. Fenton had handed her into it, and desired Ward to follow in a fly. He considerately made no further attempt to talk to her, and [39] she leaned back luxuriously on the cushions, watching the reflections of the carriage lamps in the puddles, but hardly conscious of anything except fatigue, until the opening of the lodge gates roused her to the knowledge that she had nearly reached the place which it seemed such a mockery to think about as home.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST NIGHT

“Ah, there you are!” cried a gay voice, as Sydney, blinking in the lamp-light, was led by Mr. Fenton into the great hall of St. Quentin Castle.

She felt a butterfly kiss on her forehead, and then the speaker, a tall, beautifully-dressed lady, went on talking to Mr. Fenton.

“What abominable weather! St. Quentin hardly thought you would bring the child, and has been abominably fidgety all day in consequence. You must both be frozen! Come to the fire!”

A splendid fire of logs was burning at the farther end of the hall, which was divided off by tapestry from the entrance. She led the way towards it, talking volubly the whole time; so it was not till they were standing by the cheerful blaze, and Lady Frederica had stopped speaking for a moment to look at Sydney, that [41] Mr. Fenton had the opportunity of getting in a word. “How is Lord St. Quentin?”

“Oh, much the same, I think,” she answered carelessly. “He is up to-day—I suppose he wanted to see Sydney. Dickson seemed to think he wasn’t quite so well. Dickson is St. Quentin’s man, my dear,” she added, turning to Sydney; “a most invaluable creature. I really don’t know what we should do without him, for St. Quentin won’t have a trained nurse. So faddy, but he doesn’t like them. But Dickson is really quite admirable with him, and doesn’t mind his temper— so fortunate—and can read to him, and do all the things which otherwise perhaps might be expected of me. Yes, you are like the family—their eyes, hasn’t she, Mr. Fenton? But you haven’t much of a colour, child!”

“Miss Lisle is very tired, I fear,” suggested Mr. Fenton, looking kindly at the girl. “I think, if I might suggest it, a little rest before dinner.... I hear her maid arriving now, I believe.”

“Well, come with me, my dear, and see your room,” said Lady Frederica graciously, laying her hand upon Sydney’s shoulder. “Mr. Fenton, be an angel, and go in and talk to St. Quentin. He is in the library and as [42] irritable as can be. I really can’t go near him till he’s in a better humour. Come, Sydney.”

They went together up the wide, shallow staircase, guarded at its foot by two highly realistic-looking stuffed bears—shot by the present marquess in the Rockies some years ago, Lady Frederica explained, in answer to the girl’s shy admiration.

She had not time to look at the magnificent collection of sheathed rapiers which adorned the walls of the long corridor through which they next passed. Lady Frederica hurried her along, remarking that she would have plenty of time for studying all “those tiresome old historic treasures” by-and-by.

“The castle is simply full of them,” she said. “All the Lisles have been collectors; it is one of their many irritating ways. I hope you haven’t any hobby, my dear?”

“Hobby” was a new word in Sydney’s vocabulary, and she hardly knew how to answer the question. But a reply was the one thing Lady Frederica never wanted, and she went on talking in her clear, high-bred, rather monotonous voice until they reached the first of Sydney’s rooms.

“They all open from one another,” she said, as the girl looked round with dazzled eyes. [43] “You like them? That’s right. St. Quentin told me to get everything you would require. Your bedroom is the innermost, you see. Then comes your morning-room, where you can do what you like without risk of being interfered with. And this last is your school-room—yours, too; till you share it with a governess. How old are you, by the way?”

“Well, perhaps I shall let you off regular lessons,” Lady Frederica said; “but you must have masters for accomplishments. I shall tell St. Quentin so. I don’t suppose you learnt much with that doctor—what was his name?—Chichester? Gracious, child, how white you are! I hope you are not going to be delicate! One invalid in the castle is quite enough—especially one with a temper like St. Quentin’s. I’ll send your maid to you, and you had better rest a little before dressing for dinner. We dine at eight. Au revoir, my dear!”

She took off her coat, hat, and gloves, and put them tidily away, then knelt down by the bright fire blazing in the dainty tiled grate of her bedroom and looked round it.

It was certainly a contrast from the little bare room she and Dolly shared at home, where there was no space for anything that was not strictly needful. This room was more like a drawing-room than a bedroom, Sydney thought.

The prevailing colour was a delicate rose pink; the carpet, soft as velvet to her feet, was rose and green; the window-curtains fell to the floor in long, soft folds of rose-silk fringed with gold.

An easy-chair drawn invitingly to the fire was covered in brocade of the same, and the satin quilt upon the lofty bed was rose and gold.

“It is much too beautiful for me!” thought Sydney, and went through the curtained door into what Lady Frederica had called her morning-room.

A soft moss green was the prevailing colour here; Sydney’s weariness was forgotten as she darted from the dainty writing-table with its silver-topped ink-stands and chased blotting-case, to the small but perfect piano standing across one corner of the room.

She felt as yet too much a visitor to open it and try its tone, as she would have liked to do, and the next moment had forgotten the [45] desire, and had flung herself upon her knees beside the book-case, green and gold to match her room, and full of story-books!

She took out two or three at random, and “dipped” luxuriously, half-kneeling, half-sitting, crumpled anyhow upon the floor. A whole book-case full of new books to be read! She was a lucky girl. A picture flashed back vividly into her mind of the “children’s book-case” at home, where every book had been read and re-read times out of number, and was like an old friend. Oh, if she could only transport all these lovely things into the shabby school-room at home! How Mildred would love the rose-and-gold bedroom—dear Millie, who cared for pretty things so much, and hardly ever had any!

And oh, what raptures Dolly would have gone into over that exquisite little piano!—Dolly, who had been known to cry, yes, really cry, when trying ineffectually to wile some music out of the ancient yellow keys of theirs at home. And how Madge and Fred and Prissie would have loved some—just half-a-dozen—just one , of this profusion of new books before her!

It is poor fun to enjoy things all alone! A great tear splotched down upon the blue-and-gold [46] cover of the book that Sydney was holding, and left a mark upon it. She dried it hastily, and got up from the floor, just as Ward came into the room.

“Yes, please,” the girl answered, wondering if she ever would have courage to address this dignified person familiarly as “Ward.”

Sydney did not own a real evening dress, but Ward managed the plain white nuns-veiling frock which she and Dolly had had just alike for the Christmas parties last year so as to make it look very nice.

It proved to be a little short. “I think perhaps I had better let a tuck down before to-morrow night,” Sydney suggested meekly, noticing how much slender black ankle showed beneath it.

There was a moment’s pause before Ward answered her with studied calm, “I do not think that will be necessary, ma’am.”

She was dressed in good time, and stood looking rather forlornly at her maid, who was on her knees, unpacking, with a quite expressionless face, the clothes mother had put in so carefully.

“Lady Frederica sits in the gold drawing-room this week, ma’am,” Ward said, guessing the reason of the girl’s perplexity; “the second door to the right of the inner hall. Shall I come with you to the stairs, ma’am?” she added, rising.

Sydney thanked her warmly. “I am a little afraid of losing myself here,” she said shyly, at which Ward smiled condescendingly, and said that “Miss Lisle would soon be quite accustomed to the Castle.”

She took the girl to the head of the wide stairs, reiterated her instructions, and let Sydney to go down the stairs and through the sombre splendour of the hall, alone.

Although lit by many antique hanging lamps, its immensity made it rather dark, and the suits of armour standing in the corners had a very ghost-like appearance. Sydney crossed the black polished floor as fast as its slipperiness would allow, and was about to open the second door on the right, according to her maid’s instructions, when a voice spoke, not loud, but imperatively, “Are you Sydney?”

She turned, and saw that a long couch on wheels was drawn up near the great log fire, and that the man upon it had moved his head and was looking at her.

She crossed the hall again and came to him, putting her hand diffidently into his. “So you are Sydney?” Lord St. Quentin said.

What Sydney saw, as she returned his steady gaze, was a tall man, lying very nearly flat, his head only just raised by a small pillow. His hair was dark brown like her own and his eyes grey; but there the likeness ceased. The face was thin, the mouth cynical, and the sharp line drawn down the middle of his forehead made it strangely different from the girl’s smooth one.

What he saw was a slight girl dressed in white, looking taller than she really was by reason of her slenderness, with a cloud of soft brown hair framing her face and hanging in a long tail down her back; and earnest, pitying, dark grey eyes fixed upon him. They looked at each other in silence for a full minute; then St. Quentin released her hand and pointed to a low chair by his side.

There was a pause. St. Quentin was frowning. Sydney felt that she ought to originate a subject in her turn.

“I hope you are better to-day, Lord St. Quentin?” she got out with an effort.

“Thanks, I’m all right,” he said shortly; then added with half a smile, “Drop the ‘Lord,’ please—we are cousins!”

“Well, Sydney, so you and St. Quentin have made acquaintance already?” Lady Frederica exclaimed, coming down the stairs as the gong began to sound with a roar like distant thunder. “How clever of you to find each other out! How are you now, my dear boy? Dickson told me you were ‘rather low’: how I hate that expression in the mouth of servants! It always means ill-tempered. Now, my maid can never say I’m ‘low,’ at all events. I make a point of never giving way to low spirits. Ah, Mr. Fenton,” as the old lawyer came into the circle of fire-light, “here you are!—punctual as usual! I have just been telling St. Quentin he shouldn’t give way to low spirits; a mistake, isn’t it? I suppose you will dine in the library, St. Quentin? Shall we see you again to-night?”

“You might come to me in the library for five minutes after dinner, if you will, Aunt Rica,” he answered rather moodily. “I won’t keep you. Good-night, Sydney.”

“Good-night, Cousin St. Quentin,” the girl [50] said. Her cousin’s thin hand took hers for a minute, and she followed Lady Frederica in to dinner.

Sydney thought the meal unending. The long table, the enormous room, the powdered footmen all combined to make her feel strange and very, very homesick. But the dessert had been partaken of at last, and Lady Frederica looked at the girl. “Shall we come, my dear? You’ll join us presently in the gold drawing-room, Mr. Fenton?”

“Pull a chair up to the fire, child,” said Lady Frederica with a shiver. “I suppose I must go to St. Quentin: he probably wants to give me some further directions about you. I shan’t be long: my dear nephew is not by any means good company, I can assure you!”

Sydney drew a chair to the fire as she had been told, and sat staring into it with dreamy eyes. Nine o’clock. At this time they all would be in the drawing-room at home, except the little ones in bed. Father would very likely be reading aloud to mother something that had interested him; Madge making doll’s clothes [51] in her special corner of the room, with a good many whispered appeals to Mildred over some tiresome garment that would not come right, and Hugh and Hal would be playing one of their interminable games of chess—supposing Hugh had not been called out to see some sick person. Just one chair would be empty, that little dumpy cane one in which she usually sat, which creaked so much as to make a never-ceasing joke about “Sydney’s prodigious weight”! Sydney’s head sank low, and the fire grew blurred when she thought about that little chair. Was it only last night she had been in the dear drawing-room at home with all of them?

When, ten minutes later, the coffee and Mr. Fenton came noiselessly together into the gold drawing-room, the old lawyer found the little heiress leaning back in the great arm-chair by the fire asleep.

“Send Miss Lisle’s maid to her room at once,” he ordered, and then gently woke her.

“Do not be alarmed, my dear young lady; it is only I,” he said. “I was compelled to rouse you, because I am certain you ought to go to bed. I have sent your maid to your [52] room, and I strongly advise you to go there immediately without waiting for Lady Frederica’s return. I will explain everything to her.”

Sydney was only too glad to go. “Thank you very much,” she said, holding out her hand to Mr. Fenton. He watched her go slowly up the wide staircase before returning to the drawing-room, where he was joined in a minute by Lady Frederica.

“Went to sleep while you were talking to her, did she?” she laughed. “Dear me, Mr. Fenton, how abominably prosy you must have been! Oh, it was before you came in from the dining-room, was it? Fancy the child finding us so wearying, even in our absence! I must tell St. Quentin that: it will make him shriek!”

But when she had tripped back into the library where her nephew, his brows drawn very close together, was endeavouring to read, Lord St. Quentin did not seem to find the information she had come to bring him so particularly funny.

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST MORNING

Bright sunshine greeted Sydney when she awoke on the first morning in her new home.

It fell softly through the shading blinds upon the dainty fittings of her luxurious room, and on Ward, as she stood beside her with a tray, containing a fairy-like tea-set for one.

“Oh, what is the time?” cried poor Sydney in dismay. Surely she had overslept herself, and Ward was bringing her a rather unsubstantial breakfast in bed!

“Eight o’clock, ma’am,” the maid answered softly, placing the tray on a little table by her bedside. “Would you wish me to draw the blinds up, or shall I leave them down till you get up?”

“Lady Frederica breakfasts in her bedroom, Miss Lisle,” said Ward; “and so of course does his lordship since his accident. Mr. Fenton commonly likes his about ten o’clock [54] when staying here, I have heard. He breakfasts downstairs. Lady Frederica thought you would wish to take yours in bed.”

“I would much rather get up,” said poor Sydney. “I am not at all tired now, and I get up at seven at home.”

“When I have drunk my tea, please,” the girl said; “that is—unless you think Lady Frederica would mind?”

A very faint smile did part Ward’s lips for a moment, but only for a moment. “I am sure her ladyship would wish you to do exactly as you please, ma’am,” she said, and withdrew to desire a housemaid to bring up Miss Lisle’s hot water.

“Exactly as I please; this is an odd place!” thought Sydney, as she sipped her tea out of a Dresden china cup and ate the wafer bread and butter provided.

She took heart of grace and rejected Ward’s services over her morning toilet: the sunshine had given her fresh courage, and she felt quite a different being from the tired-out, homesick Sydney of last night.

She was dressed by a quarter to nine, and stood looking from her window at the green park, with its great bare spreading trees below her. Only a quarter to nine! What should she do with herself till breakfast time? At this hour at home, breakfast would be a thing of the past, and father and Hugh have gone off to the hospital. And mother would have done a hundred and one things before settling down to teaching the girls; and the boys would have been off—the younger ones to school, and Hal to King’s College. And Sydney herself would have been practising, or hearing Prissie practise, on that old shabby school-room piano. How odd it felt!

Five minutes passed by very slowly; Sydney went and knelt down by the fire that the housemaid had lit when she brought the water. One hour and ten minutes before breakfast-time—perhaps more, if Mr. Fenton were late!

“I know!” she cried, rising quickly to her feet, and hurrying into thick boots, coat and scarlet tam-o’-shanter. She would go out and explore the park till ten o’clock.

She ran downstairs to the great hall, meeting nobody until she came out on the splendid flight of marble steps, which a man was cleaning.

He got up from his knees and stared, when he saw a young lady march out of the double doors, with the evident intention of going for a walk.

“Good-morning!” Sydney cried brightly, as she ran down the steps, leaving the man still staring after the slight figure and red cap.

The park was rather wet, but Sydney’s boots were thick, and she scorned the plain, uninteresting road along which she had driven last night. She cut across the grass at right angles, running at intervals to keep herself warm, and startling the deer not a little. Never having seen these animals outside the Zoological Gardens, she was much excited by their discovery, and made many unsuccessful attempts to coax them to her.

By-and-by she came to the boundary of the park. There was no gate, but a convenient gap in the hedge; through which she climbed without difficulty.

As she dropped from the gap into the road beneath, she became aware that somebody a good deal smaller than herself was going to do the same thing on the other side of the road. Through a thin hedge topping a high grassy [59] bank appeared, first, two small kicking legs, and then something fat and roundabout in blue, surmounted by a crop of red curls. Sydney’s dash forward was not a bit too soon, for the creature rolled down the bank at a prodigious pace, alighting fortunately in her arms. It wriggled from her in a moment, and regained its feet. Then Sydney saw that it was a round-faced, red-haired little boy, dressed in a navy blue serge smock, just now extremely muddy.

He stopped to pull on the wet strapped shoe which the mud in the ditch had nearly sucked from his foot, pulled down his belt about his bunchy little petticoats, and observed affably, “Hullo, big girl!”

“You have scratched your face, dear, getting through that hedge,” Sydney said, looking him over; “doesn’t it hurt you?”

“Scwatches don’t hurt boys !” he assured her, with a strong emphasis upon the last word.

“I’m Pauly Seaton,” he explained confidentially, “and I’m going to be five quite soon. Big girl, shall we go home now, ’cause I’m daddy’s boy, and he doesn’t like me to be lostened?”

He put his hand into Sydney’s quite confidingly. “But where do you live, Pauly dear?” she asked.

They went a few steps together; then Pauly stopped, with an expression of dismay on his round baby face. “Oh, bover, big girl, my shoe is stuck like my teef in toffee!”

Sydney knelt down to investigate, and extract the little shoe which had stuck so tightly in the mud. But, alas! in the tug Pauly had given it the frail bottom had come off.

Pauly liked this idea, and shouted gleefully, as, with much effort upon Sydney’s part, his sturdy little form was hoisted to her shoulders, and his muddy toes, one shoeless, put into her hands.

“Oh, Pauly, you are wet!” she cried. “I expect your mother will put you into dry socks the minute you get home.”

“Me and daddy haven’t got no muvvers,” Pauly said. “There’s ‘In Memorwy of Wose’ in the churchyard. God wented and wanted muvver, that was why. Gee-up, horse!”

Poor Sydney! the “geeing-up” was not so easy. Pauly was no light weight. Her face grew scarlet and her breath a little gasping. She sincerely hoped the vicarage was not far away, and was not sorry when, as they turned into its drive, a tall figure came hurrying to meet them.

“Daddy!” shouted Pauly gleefully, and, as Mr. Seaton hastened to remove the burden from the tired horse, he explained: “Got frew the hedge of the kitchen garden, daddy, and fell down a gweat big way, and there was this gweat big girl there, and she caught me in her gweat big hands!”

The Vicar reached round his small son, to give his hand to Sydney, with a smile that she liked.

“You seem to have been very good to my little scamp,” he said, “and I’m afraid you’re quite done up with carrying the great lump—that’s what you are, Pauly! Come in and have some milk or something; and then, if you’ll tell me where you live, I’ll drive you home.”

“I am Sydney Lisle,” she answered shyly, “and I have just come to live at St. Quentin Castle.”

They had reached the pretty gabled Vicarage by now. Mr. Seaton looked at her with a [62] kindly, amused scrutiny as he held the door open for her. “So you are Miss Lisle?” was all he said.

A maid was sweeping the hall. “Would you fetch a glass of milk and some cake, Elizabeth?” the Vicar said. “Now, Miss Lisle, shall I leave you to rest and refresh yourself in the dining-room, or will you like better to come to Pauly’s nursery, while I put him into dry clothes?”

Pauly led the way up the steep uncarpeted nursery stairs, guarded at the top by a wicket gate, and would have liked to do the honours of “my wocking horse” and “my own bed,” but his father quietly checked him.

“Go into the night nursery and take your shoes and socks off, Pauly. Now, Miss Lisle, sit down in that chair, please. Here comes the milk—that’s right.”

He put the milk and cake on a small table beside her, and retired into the night nursery to find dry clothes for his little son. Sydney drank the milk and ate a noble slice of cake, finding herself really very hungry now that she had time to think about it.

Mr. Seaton redressed his little son with a speed which showed he was not playing nurse [63] for the first time, and the two came back into the day nursery, the Vicar carrying sundry little muddy garments to hang on the high nursery guard. He talked very pleasantly to Sydney all the time, asking where she had lived before, and whether she knew Blankshire at all.

“No, we usually go somewhere near London for our holidays,” she explained. “You see, there are a good many of us.”

“You’ll miss them,” said the Vicar, noticing the little tremble in her voice, as she spoke of home. “I am afraid it will be rather dull for you here at first. But you will make your own interests before long. Life has a knack of growing very interesting, you will find, wherever we are called upon to live it.”

Sydney had heard things like this in sermons before, but somehow the fact that this was said to her in the homely surroundings of a nursery made it strike her more. Certainly Mr. Seaton himself did not look like a man who found life uninteresting. She smiled and looked up frankly.

“They are all so kind,” she said, “and say, ‘Do what you like.’ But it doesn’t seem that there is anything to do.”

“Plenty,” said the Vicar briskly, “and you’ll find it if you look for it. I wonder [64] whether Lord St. Quentin would allow you to take a little class in the Sunday School, for one thing?”

“Oh, I should just love to!” Sydney cried. “Mother always said I might when I was eighteen, and my birthday is next month. Only I don’t know a great deal.”

“Thank you very much for your willingness to help,” he said. “I will write to your cousin.”

“I am certain he won’t mind,” the girl said happily. “He is very kind, you know, and told Lady Frederica to put the loveliest things into my rooms. But, please, I think I ought to be going now, for Mr. Fenton has his breakfast at ten.”

The Vicar laughed. “I am afraid Mr. Fenton will have breakfasted alone this morning, owing to my little scamp here. Do you know what the time is?”

“You won’t do any such thing!” said the Vicar firmly. “I am going to drive you to [65] the Castle in my pony-cart, and explain your disappearance.”

“I come, too!” Pauly cried, scrambling up from the centre of the hearth-rug in a great hurry.

“No,” said the Vicar gravely. “I told you not to go into the kitchen garden alone, Pauly. You must be obedient before daddy takes you out with him.”

Pauly did not cry, as Sydney half expected. He twisted his fingers in and out of his belt in silence for a minute; then observed defiantly, “Bad old Satan come along and said, ‘Pauly, go into the kitchen garden.’”

Pauly slowly stumped across the room, and stood looking wistfully from the barred window.

“Wis’ I’d punc’ed his head!” came in a subdued murmur from the bunchy little figure in the sunshine.

Mr. Seaton smiled and stroked the red hair gently. “Next time Pauly will say ‘No,’ that will be better.”

The Vicar brought round the little cart with its shaggy pony. Sydney got in, and they [66] drove off. From the nursery window a fat hand was waving to them with an affectation of great cheerfulness. “Poor little chap!” said Pauly’s father.

Mr. Fenton was waiting about rather anxiously on the steps of the Castle, and came forward with a look of unmistakable relief as he recognised Sydney.

He shook hands with the Vicar and thanked him warmly for “bringing home Miss Lisle,” but Sydney noticed that he did not ask him to come in. He said that neither Lady Frederica nor Lord St. Quentin were yet down, but the servants had been much alarmed by Sydney’s disappearance. She and Mr. Seaton between them explained its cause; Mr. Fenton reiterated his thanks, and the Vicar got into his pony-cart and drove away, with a shy hand-shake from Sydney and a request that he would give her love to little Pauly.

“Was it wrong to go out for a walk?” Sydney asked, as she and the old lawyer went into the Castle.

“Oh no, not wrong, my dear young lady!” he assured her, “only perhaps rather injudicious.”

CHAPTER VI
LORD ST. QUENTIN

By the time she had been a week at Castle St. Quentin, Sydney felt as though the old happy life in London were years away.

She did not even look like the same Sydney, in the dainty frocks with which Lady Frederica replaced the clothes mother had packed so carefully.

“Miss Lisle has not a thing fit to wear, my lady,” had been Ward’s verdict, when Lady Frederica made inquiries into the state of Sydney’s wardrobe, and Lady Frederica’s own dressmaker in London received a lengthy order marked “Immediate” that very night.

The frocks were all ankle-length. “We will not put your hair up till you are presented in March,” said Lady Frederica; but she only laughed when Sydney threw out a timid suggestion that perhaps in that case the old frocks might do till she came out. All these new [68] clothes for four months’ use only: it hardly seemed possible to believe.

Sydney’s wardrobe replenished, Lady Frederica took her education in hand with undiminished energy. And the girl, although of no very studious disposition, quite hailed the idea of lessons. Something to do would be indeed a comfort, was the conclusion she arrived at by the end of the first week. Writing had lost its zest now she had unlimited time in which to do it, and even story-books palled when read all day. Solitary walks were most decidedly forbidden by Lady Frederica, when she heard of the girl’s adventure on the morning after her arrival; and when Mr. Fenton left the Castle, as he did in a day or two, her life was lonely indeed.

St. Quentin was worse, and confined to his room for the whole week, seeing no one but his man and Dr. Lorry; and Lady Frederica was never down until the two o’clock luncheon.

If it had not been for a long letter of loving understanding counsel from mother, Sydney would have been more than half inclined to give up the early rising and other old home ways which made the mornings seem so long. But mother must not be disappointed in her, and she thought of Mr. Seaton’s words, and [69] determined to try hard to make the interests which did not seem inclined to make themselves.

It was on a dull afternoon a week after her arrival that she met the doctor as he came from the library, where St. Quentin had been reinstalled for the first time since the night she came.

Dr. Lorry was an elderly man, very kind-hearted and a teller of good stories by the yard. He held out his hand to Sydney with a smile.

“Come in and see your cousin for a little while this afternoon, my dear young lady,” he suggested. “I think a visitor would do him good to-day.”

Sydney followed him obediently into the library—a handsome but rather sombre room, where what little of the wall could be seen for well-filled book-cases was covered by Spanish leather, and the furniture wore the same sober tint of dark brown.

St. Quentin’s couch was drawn up near the fire: he looked considerably more ill now she saw him in daylight. His face was very worn and his eyes sunken.

“Well, Lord St. Quentin, I’ve brought you a visitor, you see,” the doctor said, drawing [70] the girl forward. “She is not to chatter you to death—are you a great talker, Miss Lisle?—but just to quietly amuse you. Good-bye, I’ll look in again to-night.”

“Sit down,” said her cousin. “There, by the fire; you look cold. You needn’t stay above five minutes if you find it bores you.”

“But I want to stay,” Sydney said. Her glance was the direct one of a child. “I have been wanting to see you to say thank you for all those lovely things you have given me—in my rooms, you know. And Lady Frederica says I am to have a horse, and riding lessons too. It is awfully good of you!”

She pulled up in confusion at the “awfully” which had escaped her, but her cousin did not seem to notice it.

“Oh, you like the notion of a horse; that’s right,” he said. “I wrote up to Braemuir, who’s a pretty fair judge, to choose one suited for a lady, and to send it down. You ought to look rather well on horseback.”

He looked critically at the slight figure dressed in soft green, touched with creamy lace, before him. “I’m glad Aunt Rica didn’t make you put your hair up yet,” he said.

“At home they said I must put it up on my eighteenth birthday,” Sydney volunteered.

“I mean in London,” she explained, speaking rather low. “Mother always said I must not keep it down after I was eighteen, but Hugh didn’t want it to go up.”

“Who is Hugh?” St Quentin’s tone was rather sharp; Sydney wondered if he were in pain.

“Hugh is the eldest of us, but not a bit stuck-up or elder-brotherish because of that. He is such a dear boy and very clever too. Why, he has an appointment at the Blue-Friars’ Hospital that most men don’t get till they’re ever so old, over thirty! And Hugh is so nice too, at home; he and I are special friends——”

Sydney could not understand what made her cousin’s voice sound so unpleasant as he interrupted her with another question:

“Twenty-four last birthday, Cousin St. Quentin.” She no longer felt inclined to enlarge upon Hugh’s merits.

“Don’t answer his letters, if you please. [72] I have no doubt your Chichesters are excellent people, but a correspondence between you and this young paragon is most unsuitable.”

The colour flamed into Sydney’s face. “I don’t know what you mean, Cousin St. Quentin,” she cried hotly, “and Hugh will think me so—so horrid if I never answer his letters!”

The cynical smile deepened round his mouth. “The sooner you understand that playing at brother and sister is out of the question now the better,” he said quietly.

Sydney set her teeth to keep the tears back and stared hard into the fire. She would not cry before St. Quentin, but his tone, even more than his words, made her desperately hot and angry. There was silence in the room for full five minutes: then the footman came in with a note for Lord St. Quentin.

“What’s this ... ‘Miss Lisle ... help in the Sunday School ... small class ...’ (confound the fellow’s insolence!) ‘subject of course to my approval ...’ (He won’t get that, I can tell him!)”——

“Oh, Cousin St. Quentin!” Sydney cried, springing to her feet, “is it about my class in the Sunday School? I told Mr. Seaton [73] I should like to take one. You will let me, won’t you?”

“Nonsense! You know nothing about it!” he assured her. “You wouldn’t like it, and I don’t choose you to be always after parsons. Sit down there at the writing-table—you’ll find pens and paper—and decline his offer, please!”

“I regret to find myself unable to take a class in your Sunday School,” dictated Lord St. Quentin. “Yours faithfully, Sydney Lisle .”

But Sydney paused before the “yours faithfully” and faced round with troubled eyes.

“He was very kind to me, and that sounds rather rude, doesn’t it? Mayn’t I just put something else before the signature, for politeness?”

“Oh, say your brute of a cousin won’t allow you to do anything you want,” the marquess suggested, with a rather mocking smile.

Sydney reddened, and, without remark, finished the letter that he had dictated. Then she directed the envelope to “The Rev. Paul [74] Seaton,” and, rising, put it in her cousin’s hand. “I couldn’t say a thing like that, you know,” she said, and he noticed that the childish figure had a dignity of its own. “Shall I ring for one of the footmen to take it to the Vicarage?” she added.

“I will,” said her cousin rather sharply, reaching out his arm. His couch stood rather farther off from the bell than usual, and he turned a little on his side in the attempt to reach it. The next moment Sydney saw him fall back with a stifled exclamation of suffering, while his face grew ashen and his brows contracted. She sprang forward. “Ring twice for Dickson,” he gasped, “and go!”

She pealed the bell furiously, then, with a remembrance of father, looked on the little table beside him.

Yes, sure enough, there was the bottle with, “Five drops to be taken in water when the pain is acute.”

The water was there all ready. She held it to her cousin’s lips, raising his head carefully. “It is the stuff in the blue bottle, Cousin St. Quentin. Dickson said you took it when the pain was bad.”

When Dickson came hurrying in, breathless with his run from the distant servants’ quarters, [75] he found his master lying still with closed eyes, while Sydney dabbed his forehead with cologne and water.

“Bless me, miss, that ain’t no good!” gasped the servant, forgetting manners in the exigency of the moment. “That blue bottle, please, miss, and the water!”

The strained look was passing from St. Quentin’s face, and he opened his eyes again. “It’s all right, Dickson, Miss Lisle has already given me the dose, as well as any doctor. Don’t stay now, child; Dickson will look after me.”

Sydney did not see her cousin again that evening, but Dr. Lorry looked in and reported him a little better.

And the next afternoon, as Sydney was driving through the village by Lady Frederica’s side in the great landau, Mr. Seaton came up, and Lady Frederica stopped the carriage to speak to him.

Sydney, remembering the note she had so unwillingly written him, grew scarlet and shrank back into a corner of the carriage, but he greeted her and Lady Frederica as though nothing disagreeable had occurred.

Presently he asked, turning to the girl, “How is Lord St. Quentin to-day? I thought [76] it so good of him to write himself and explain why you cannot help us in the Sunday School at present.”

“Did Cousin St. Quentin write to you?” Sydney cried, finding it hard to believe her ears.

“Yes, I heard from him late last night, explaining what great things you are going to do in the way of education, Miss Lisle. Naturally he does not wish you to undertake anything more just now.”

“Yes, Miss Lisle will be presented in March, and till that time we are going to educate her,” broke in Lady Frederica. “I wish we were not such a frightful distance from London, for I suppose the Donisbro’ masters will have to do, unless I carry her off straight to town, which would be much the best thing to do!”

“Only of course you would not wish to leave Lord St. Quentin in his present state of health,” said Mr. Seaton rather pointedly, and Lady Frederica sighed and said she supposed not, but these lingering illnesses were very inconvenient.

As soon as they reached the Castle, Sydney ran to the library, knocked, and went in. St. Quentin seemed immersed in a book. She [77] went and stood beside his couch, her hands behind her.

“Cousin St. Quentin,” she said, “we met Mr. Seaton, so I know now that my note did not go to him.”

“It went into the fire,” said St. Quentin, without raising his eyes from his book. “Your hand-writing isn’t precisely a credit to the aristocracy, you know. You’d better do some copies before you turn into a marchioness.”

“I’m very sorry I was cross,” she said earnestly. “It was ever so good of you to write him a nice note instead!”

“If you are going to remain,” he said, “and pray do, if you feel inclined, shut the door and don’t talk nonsense!”

CHAPTER VII
MISS MORRELL

A companion-governess was procured for Sydney, the daughter of the vicar of one of the churches near Donisbro’. The girl was unfeignedly delighted at the prospect of a companion, even of the rather advanced age, as it seemed to her, of three-and-twenty.

She grew quite excited over the arranging of Miss Osric’s room, and would have liked to decorate it with some of the pretty things from her own. But this Lady Frederica would not allow.

“You can have anything you like for her in reason, child,” she said, “without stripping yourself. What, you don’t think there are enough pictures in her room? Well, you may drive in with Ward to Dacreshaw this afternoon, and get some, if you like. There is a good print-shop there. Put the bill down to St. Quentin.”

But that was not necessary, for Sydney received a summons to the library before she set out that afternoon.

Her cousin laid his pen down on her entrance; she saw he had been signing a cheque.

“I haven’t started you on a dress-allowance, Sydney,” he said, “because you had better let Aunt Rica rig you out at present. She knows how to do the thing, you see. But you’ll want some money to play with, so there’s your first quarter.” He held out the cheque.

“Yes, it is; there, put it in your purse. You can change it at the Bank at Dacreshaw, where I hear you’re going. Good-bye, don’t spend it all on chocolates!”

For the first time since her arrival at St. Quentin Castle, Sydney felt almost happy. What Christmas presents she could get now for every one at home! Should she choose them at Dacreshaw, or wait till she went to Donisbro’ for the lessons in drilling and deportment she was to take with a very select class of girls in the cathedral city?

She sat in a happy dream all through the drive, and only roused herself when she reached the print-shop.

The Castle carriage was known, and the owner of the shop came forward at once to serve the young lady, leaving the customer he had been attending—a tall, graceful girl, some years Sydney’s senior, with great calm, clear eyes.

Sydney found the shopman most obliging. He bowed repeatedly; he seemed willing to reach down every picture in the shop for her to look at, regardless of the trouble, and he asked with real anxiety after the health of “his lordship, Lord St. Quentin.”

The tall girl had come rather near to them to examine a picture Sydney had laid down. She started at the shopman’s question, looked irresolutely for a minute at the younger girl, then came across to her with a smile.

“Miss Lisle,” she said, “you will not know me, but I know Lady Frederica very well, and have stayed at Castle St. Quentin. I am Katharine Morrell.”

“Mr. Fenton told me about you,” Sydney said, brightening instantly. Speaking to another girl felt like meeting a countryman in a strange and savage land. “Do you live near?” she added eagerly.

“Some distance off; at Donisbro’,” she said; “my father is the Dean of Donisbro’ Cathedral. [81] I hear you are coming to the calisthenic class at Lady Helmsley’s. Perhaps I shall see something of you, for I am taking a little cousin to it.”

“I am so glad you will be there,” Sydney said, brightening still more. The girl had a lovely face, she thought, its slight look of sadness only adding to its beauty. She was like some bygone saint.

“I am busy choosing a picture,” said Miss Morrell, “and you are, of course, on the same errand. I am executing a commission for my father; perhaps you are for your cousin? By the way, how is he?”

“He has been worse, but seems better these last few days,” Sydney answered, rather doubtfully. “Dr. Lorry never tells us much about him.”

“They never do,” Miss Morrell said, in a low voice. “We are left to eat our hearts out in ignorance, because, forsooth, they think a woman cannot bear the truth. Oh, how much easier it would be if we might know, and care, and be miserable if we wished!”

Sydney felt vaguely puzzled. Miss Morrell had spoken quietly, but her voice vibrated, as though the words she spoke were almost forced from her, and, as she turned away at the [82] shopman’s approach, the girl saw her hands were shaking. But, after that outburst, her manner returned to its usual calm, and she busied herself with real kindness in helping Sydney in that difficult thing—choice.

Four charming prints in sepia of well-known pictures were at length decided on, and the man managed to fit them with frames from his store, while Sydney was giving her opinion on the comparative merits of “The Angelus” in sepia or black-and-white for the benefit of her new friend.

“You must come and have some tea with me at Grayson’s before you drive home,” said Miss Morrell, when both had paid for their pictures, and Sydney’s had been placed in the brougham. “Oh, yes, you must: you cannot possibly be back at the Castle till long past tea time, and I have to wait for papa, who is at a meeting. Tell your maid to go and get tea for herself; the coachman will know, I expect, if he ought to put the horses up.”

“Very good, ma’am. Call for you in ’arf an hour, ma’am,” he said, and drove off to the St. Quentin Arms in the next street.

Sydney soon found herself at home with [83] Miss Morrell, and the two girls talked happily over the cream-cakes and fragrant tea for which Grayson’s of Dacreshaw is noted. Ward drank hers in the room below with an easy mind. She had heard enough of Miss Morrell in the servants’ hall of Castle St. Quentin to feel certain that there could be no objection to Miss Lisle associating with her.

Sydney took the larger share in the conversation. Miss Morrell had a knack of drawing people out, and the girl found herself telling of the Chichester family at home, and making her new friend laugh over funny anecdotes of Fred and Prissie.

“You must have found it dull at the Castle just at first, after being used to so large a party,” Miss Morrell said.

“I did,” Sydney owned frankly, “and I find it rather dull still. But Lady Frederica is kind and amusing, and I like—yes—I do quite like, Cousin St. Quentin.”

Miss Morrell had stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped while Sydney was speaking. She took rather a long time in doing so, and when her head appeared again there was a lovely colour in her face.

“I am afraid I hear your carriage now, dear,” she said, rising, “and we must not keep the [84] horses standing, must we? No, put away your purse; I asked you to tea. I expect we shall find your maid waiting for you downstairs.”

“I do hope I shall see you at the calisthenic class!” Sydney said earnestly, and Miss Morrell smiled and said she hoped so too.

“Well, what do you think of Dacreshaw?” asked Lord St. Quentin, as Sydney peeped into the library about an hour later, with a large parcel under her arm.

She came and sat down beside him, and undid the string with business-like gravity.

“It is a perfectly lovely place!” she assured him, “and the print-shop is delightful. The pictures were all so nice that I hardly knew how to choose among them. Look at that Greuze, Cousin St. Quentin, isn’t her face just sweet? I’ve seen the original of that in the Wallace collection. Hugh took Mildred and Dolly and me there one day last year.”

“That eternal Hugh!” muttered the marquess, but beneath his breath, and Sydney chattered on without hearing.

“I couldn’t settle for ever so long whether to have the girl with the broken pitcher, or with the lamb, but Miss Morrell said——”

“Miss Morrell. She was there in the shop, Cousin St. Quentin, and oh, she was so nice! She helped me choose, and we had tea together. She knows Lady Frederica, but I don’t think she knows you—she didn’t say so, but she asked how you were. Why, Cousin St. Quentin, would you like some more drops, or shall I ring for Dickson?”

“No, I don’t want anything or anybody; it’s all right. Only you had better go off to Aunt Rica. I’m tired to-night,” he said, turning away.

She was gathering up her pictures and going obediently, when he asked, still with his head averted, “Which did you say was the picture she liked?”

“Well, you might leave me one to look at—that will do—the pitcher one, I mean.”

Sydney propped her Greuze upon the table where he could see it comfortably, and went out.

CHAPTER VIII
ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Miss Osric arrived at the Castle on the afternoon following Sydney’s expedition to Dacreshaw.

A carriage was sent to meet the 4 o’clock train, and Sydney, in spite of an uncomfortably shy sensation at the bottom of her heart, begged leave to go and meet her governess.

“Certainly not! it would be most unsuitable!” said Lady Frederica, in her most decided manner, and she walked away, leaving Sydney to wonder why everything she wished to do was either unsuitable or absurd. The words were unknown at No. 20, in that dull old square not far from Euston Station, which was home.

Still, Miss Osric should have a welcome at the Castle if she could not at the station, and Sydney hung up the pictures she had bought at Dacreshaw, and coaxed some lovely hot-house flowers out of the head-gardener, Macintosh, to fill the vases in her governess’s room.

St. Quentin was rather amused by her extensive preparations. “But you see,” Sydney remarked, when he made a laughing comment on them, “Miss Osric may be feeling just as shy and wretched as I did when I came here, and it will make a difference if somebody is really pleased to see her.”

“You were all very kind,” Sydney said doubtfully, “but, you didn’t exactly want me, did you? It is only at home one is really wanted.”

She stopped, remembering his snub on the subject of calling the Chichesters’ house home; but he only said, with a little smile, “Well, go and make your governess welcome in your own way, child. I hear wheels now.” And, as the girl flew out, her long hair streaming behind her, he said half aloud, “I wonder how it would feel to have anyone to care if one were wretched or no!”

Sydney was on the steps to receive Miss Osric, and certainly her shy but eager welcome made a good deal of difference to the feelings of the young governess, bewildered by this plunge into the outside world, made for the sake of the younger ones at home, who needed [88] better education than her father’s means allowed. Mary Osric, just returned from a brilliant career at Lady Margaret Hall, had begged to be allowed to help towards providing some of the advantages she had herself enjoyed for her juniors; and a friend had mentioned her name to Lady Frederica as that of a clever girl, likely to fill suitably the double post of governess and companion to Miss Lisle.

Miss Osric had been considered shy at College, despite her cleverness, and the idea of teaching a strange girl in an absolutely strange place was terrible to her. But she always declared afterwards that the worst was over when Sydney came running out into the hall to welcome her.

“You must be cold!” the girl cried. “Would you like to come straight to your room and take your hat off before tea? Let me carry your umbrella. Be careful how you walk; the floors are very slippery.”

“It is lovely—just like a picture,” said Miss Osric, beginning suddenly to feel less homesick. There was something very winning about Sydney’s tone.

The room where the new arrival was to sleep bore traces also of the same care for her comfort. A bright fire burnt in the grate, [89] a vase of hot-house flowers was on the writing-table, the pictures from Dacreshaw looked charming on the walls, and a little book-case was filled with a selection of Sydney’s best-loved books.

“What a charming room!” the young governess exclaimed, and Sydney, colouring a little, murmured she “was glad Miss Osric liked it.” She stayed with her governess while she took off coat, hat, and fur, and then brought her to the morning-room, where the shaded lamp shed a delicate rose glow over everything and the little tea-table was drawn up to the fire.

“I am so very glad you have come,” said Sydney, as she poured out tea and handed muffins, and Miss Osric began to realise that the duty she had set herself need not necessarily prove a hard one.

“Well, do you like the mentor?” asked St. Quentin, as Sydney came into the library to wish him good-night. “Are you going to be quite happy now you have another girl to play with?”

“But she is still hankering after those confounded Chichesters!” her cousin said to [90] himself, when the girl had left him, in which conclusion he was not far wrong.

Lady Frederica might be lax as regarded solid education. “There’s no need whatsoever to behave as though you are to be a governess, my dear,” she said to Sydney, but she was horrified by the girl’s lack of accomplishments.

“The one and only thing the child can do is to look pretty,” his aunt complained to St. Quentin, “and beauty without style is very little good. Of course, we must be thankful for small mercies—one seldom has big ones to be thankful for—and she might have been fat and podgy! But what in the world those doctor people were about not to give her drill and calisthenic lessons, I can’t think!”

“There were herds of them, I fancy,” said her nephew. “Whenever Sydney mentions them, which isn’t seldom, she springs a new one upon me. They would make an excellent third volume to the Pillars of the House . I don’t suppose there was overmuch cash to spare for accomplishments.”

“I never can think why it is that those people who cannot afford it always have such enormous families,” pursued the lady.

“If we had done our duty by Sydney as we should, there would have been one less all these eighteen years,” her nephew suggested, and Lady Frederica changed the subject, as she always did when St. Quentin had what she called a “conscientious craze.”

“It’s your health makes you talk like that, my dear boy,” she declared. “You are really getting quite ridiculous about Sydney!”

Sydney and Miss Osric breakfasted at eight-thirty, after which, when the weather was at all possible, Sydney took her ride on her new mare “Bessie,” a charming creature, whom she learned to love! Even Lady Frederica owned that, after a few lessons from old Banks, who had taught the present marquess to ride long ago, Sydney passed muster well enough on horseback. She and Bessie understood each other, and she bade fair to make a graceful and a fearless horsewoman.

“Of course she can ride; all the Lisles can ride anything that has a back to it,” St. Quentin said, when Lady Frederica condescended to approve the girl’s horsemanship; but, though his tone was careless, there was no doubt he was gratified by the fact that [92] his young cousin took after the family in that respect.

On three mornings in the week Sydney had masters from Donisbro’ for French, piano, and singing, and every Saturday a sergeant with a huge black moustache came to teach her fencing in the long “Gallery-at-Arms,” where the third marquess of St. Quentin was said to have fought a duel with the famous Duke of Marlborough one wild morning when a stormy dawn peered through the mullioned windows, and to have spared his life as being host.

Sydney came to enjoy her lessons, as soon as she had grown used to the strange sensation of having every bit of instruction to herself, with only Miss Osric sitting by to chaperone her pupil.

She had a fresh young voice of no special power, nor was her playing in the least above the average. She longed that Dolly, who would do her teachers so much more credit, might enjoy these music lessons in her stead; but the wish was futile.

She and Miss Osric lunched at two with Lady Frederica, and, if possible, managed a brisk walk before lunch. Miss Osric was as energetic as Sydney herself, and always ready to go out, whatever the weather. Sometimes [93] they had only time for a stroll in the Park, but often extended it to the picturesque little village, where the broken-down cottages, with their moss-covered thatch and ivied walls, made Miss Osric long for the summer and time for sketching.

In the afternoon Lady Frederica generally liked a companion on her drive and took Sydney, but the girl always managed to find a few minutes to run into the library to see her cousin; who, except on his worst days, was wheeled from his bedroom to the library next door about two o’clock.

After the drive there was tea, then usually another visit to St. Quentin, followed by practice, preparation for her masters, and finishing, not infrequently, with something she and Miss Osric were reading together.

They dined at eight with Lady Frederica, and afterwards sat in one of the drawing-rooms till 9.30, when Sydney was despatched to bed.

This was rather a come-down after ten o’clock bed-time at home, but Lady Frederica was firm on that point.

“I am here to turn you into the right kind of girl for your position,” she explained to Sydney, “and one of the most important things for it is a good complexion. I went to bed [94] at seven every night of my life till I was seventeen and came out, and I don’t think there was a complexion to match mine in London. Yours will never equal it, my dear, though St. Quentin does say silly things about you. Yes, my complexion was perfect, and so was my way of entering a room (you poke, rather!) and getting in and out of a carriage; and though I never could remember why Romeo wrote Juliet, or whether Chaucer or Pope was the author of ‘In Memoriam,’ I married Tim Verney, the millionaire, at the end of my first season!”

Poor Sydney used to listen to such conversations with a vague and increasing sense of discomfort. Was this to be her life, only this? Was this where all the accomplishments were leading? Was this, only this, what mother had meant by “making the best in every sense of this new life”?

She grew graver and distinctly more homesick; St. Quentin noticed the change in her, and put it down to rather too many lessons. By his decree the ride was lengthened; but it was something more than mere amusement that poor Sydney wanted. Perhaps the want she was most conscious of herself was mother.

The drill and fencing lessons were supposed to give the girl that “deportment” of which Lady Frederica spoke so constantly, but she was herself Sydney’s most effective teacher. The girl grew very weary of the constant instructions. “Don’t run downstairs, Sydney!—never seem in a hurry. My dear, don’t shake hands that way. Miss Osric, kindly give her your hand again. No, that’s not right! Dear me! I think they might have taught you such a simple thing as to shake hands gracefully at your doctor’s.”

If Sydney failed in any way, Lady Frederica was surprised that she had not been taught better at “the doctor’s.” It made the girl grow hot with indignation for the dear home people, but she was quite aware that Lady Frederica would only raise her eyebrows and say, “Gracious, child, don’t be absurd!” if she expressed a tithe of what she felt.

The bi-weekly calisthenic lessons came as a welcome relaxation. The drive to Donisbro’ was in itself a pleasure, for, after the first novelty had worn off, Lady Frederica sent Miss Osric with her pupil.

The class comprised only about a dozen girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, who met at a private house and were taught by [96] a master who bestowed instructions upon royalty.

It felt like meeting an old friend to Sydney to see Katharine Morrell’s clear-cut face and calm eyes among the mothers and governesses, and she enjoyed introducing Miss Osric and telling eagerly the unimportant little details of her daily life to an ear which was always sympathetic.

She began to look forward to Tuesdays and Fridays as the best days in the week, and save up the nicest bits of news to tell Miss Morrell—Hugh’s last success—Madge’s Latin prize at the High School—or some kindness shown her by St. Quentin.

Katharine Morrell seemed interested in all and everything that Sydney had to tell, even in the news of the Castle, which seemed to its teller so infinitely less worth hearing than the doings of the Chichesters and home.

CHAPTER IX
THE HEIRESS-APPARENT

On a clear, cold December evening a month after Sydney’s arrival, the grand old castle of St. Quentin seemed to have cast off for the moment its habitual sombreness.

Sounds of talk and laughter came from the brilliantly-lit dining-room, and the great hall, though empty still, was gay with flowers—great pots of chrysanthemums and arum lilies standing against walls where more than one cannon ball was embedded.

On this night Lord St. Quentin had elected to give a dinner to his principal tenants, and afterwards to formally present Sydney to them as his heir.

It was in vain Dr. Lorry urged that excitement was bad for his patient; it was in vain Sydney begged to be excused the ordeal. The Lisles of history had been renowned for their obstinacy in the days when half [98] the Castle had been shattered by cannon, and the present head of the house was not behind his ancestors in that respect.

“The child has been brought up in a corner,” he said, “but her acknowledgment is going to be as public as I can make it. The tenantry may just as well know something of her before she comes to rule over them.”

Lady Frederica groaned a good deal over “St. Quentin’s fads,” as she called them. “If he wants to entertain, he might just as well have consulted my pleasure by giving a dinner or a dance to our own set,” she complained; “but to expect me to be enthusiastic over the coming of a lot of old farmers is a little too much!”

Sydney did not remember that St. Quentin had asked Lady Frederica to be enthusiastic, or indeed be anything except be there, but of course she did not say so.

Lord St. Quentin asked his cousin Lord Braemuir to come down to stay at the castle, and take the head of the table at the dinner.

He was a bluff, hearty-looking man, and Sydney took a fancy to him because he spoke [99] kindly of her young mother and father, and seemed to think they had been hardly treated.

“I never could see the girl was to blame,” he told St. Quentin, when they were alone together. “She was a child and poor Frank was another, and if only Gwenyth had let well alone, there would have been no harm done. But perhaps it was just as well she did interfere, for you’ve got a charming little girl for your heir, Quin, my boy. Well, how things turn out! Fancy little Miss Henderson’s child coming to be Marchioness of St. Quentin!”

The ladies dined in the library with St. Quentin that night—Lady Frederica very magnificent in green and gold, with the Verney topazes gleaming in her hair. Sydney was all in white, and wore no jewelry. Lady Frederica was rigid in her views upon the etiquette of dress for girls not yet “out.”

The girl had insensibly improved very much during the past month in style and dignity. She held herself better, and had grown to be considerably less shy. St. Quentin watched her with approval as she sat down after dinner beside Miss Osric, and began a low-toned conversation, which should not interfere with Lady Frederica’s rather high-pitched stream then flowing over him.

She was looking very pretty too, he thought; with a colour in her small delicately-cut face and an earnest look in the great grey eyes. “Yes, Braemuir was right,” he thought to himself, “I have got a very charming heir!”

Steps were heard outside, and Lord Braemuir entered, sending his jolly voice before him. “Are you ready, Quin, my boy, and you, my dear? Yes, dinner went off splendidly, St. Quentin, and your farmers quite appreciated it, I assure you. Where is the presentation to take place? Oh, the great hall, is it? Here, shall I wheel your couch in?”

“Thanks, ring for Dickson, please,” said St. Quentin. “Will you go and bring the tenants to the hall, Braemuir, and then come back here and take in Aunt Rica. Sydney, walk beside my couch, please—don’t be frightened—nobody shall eat you!”

“I am not afraid,” said Sydney, drawing herself up, and they went into the great hall together, she walking by his side.

Lady Frederica followed, on the arm of Lord Braemuir, and Mr. Fenton, who had come down for this great occasion, gave his to Miss Osric.

All eyes were turned upon the girl as she walked slowly up the hall, her colour coming [101] and going, but showing otherwise no sign of nervousness. They came to the great fireplace and there stopped. St. Quentin raised his head a little, and spoke, his hand on Sydney’s.

“Well, gentlemen, I’m very glad to see so many of you here to-night. You all know, I think, why I asked for the pleasure of your company when I am incapable of entertaining you myself. It is to present to you my cousin and heir, Miss Lisle.”

Several people cheered at this point, and Mr. Fenton rubbed his hands together with a little smile. He detected the undercurrent of pride in St. Quentin’s voice at having such an heir to present. And he remembered well enough the tone in which the marquess had said, only five weeks ago, “We must have the girl here, I suppose!”

“A good many of you here to-night will remember her father, Lord Francis,” St. Quentin went on.

“Well, Fate and my motor-car between them, have put the title into Miss Lisle’s hands,” pursued the marquess. “I shouldn’t altogether wonder if she makes a better hand of the landlord business than I’ve done, when [102] her time comes to govern for herself. Gentlemen, I have much pleasure in presenting you my heir.”

One sentence in St. Quentin’s speech was standing out in Sydney’s mind, and repeating itself over in her head, making her deaf for the moment to all else going on around her. “I shouldn’t wonder if she makes a better hand of the landlord business than I’ve done.” Then there was something she was called upon to do in this new life, besides moving gracefully and shaking hands in the newest manner! St. Quentin had to touch her on the arm to rouse her attention to his next remark.

“Will Mr. Hudder be good enough to come forward? Miss Lisle will like to shake hands with our oldest tenant. Mr. Hudder held his farm in my grandfather’s time, Sydney,” he explained to her.

Sydney did not feel quite certain as to the proper procedure in such a case. She went forward and put her hand in the old farmer’s great brown one. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Hudder.”

The old man retained the little hand, and slowly shook it up and down. “Man and boy I’ve held my farm under the Marquesses of St. Quentin, miss,” he said solemnly. “They’ve [103] been good landlords to me, and I’ve been a good tenant to them. I’m very pleased to see you here among us, miss; though I’ll not deny but that we did hope to see his lordship there, marry and bring up a family at the old place and——”

“Bravo!” said a voice from behind the tapestry, and a gentleman, in a faultless overcoat, drew it aside and walked across the polished floor. The old farmer dropped Sydney’s hand in some confusion: the new-comer took a comprehensive glance around him through the monocle screwed into one of his rather cold blue eyes. “Hope I don’t intrude?” he inquired.

“Not at all,” said the Castle’s owner, “glad to see you.” But the smile which had been upon his face, as he watched Sydney and the old man, disappeared.

The monocle located the couch by the fire: the new visitor went towards it with outstretched hand. “Hullo, Quin, heard you got smashed up!” he remarked.

“Awfully sorry—quite cut up about it,” he explained; “thought several times of dropping you a postcard to inquire.”

“Really?” said the marquess; “but one could hardly expect such a literary effort from you. Aunt Rica, may I introduce Bridge, I don’t think you know each other. Sir Algernon Bridge—Lady Frederica Verney—Miss Lisle. Now, my dear chap, you’d better go and dine. Braemuir, you’ll look after him, as I can’t, won’t you?”

Lord Braemuir had been standing apart since the entrance of this fresh guest, with an unusually grave expression on his good-humoured face.

At St. Quentin’s words he came slowly forward, and gave his hand to the new-comer, still without a smile. “How are you, Bridge?” he said.

CHAPTER X
A MEETING

He announced that he had come to spend Christmas, much to the relief of Lady Frederica, who declared it would be “such a comfort to have somebody to amuse St. Quentin.” He himself acquiesced in the arrangement without saying much, or expressing pleasure or the reverse.

The new inmate of the Castle was distinctly an addition to its liveliness. He and Lady Frederica had several acquaintances in common, and Sydney and Miss Osric, sitting quietly at the dinner-table, found their ideas of various distinguished persons most uncomfortably disarranged. Sir Algernon had a knack, however, of suiting his conversation to his company. When he overtook Sydney and her governess [106] returning from taking soup to a sick child in the village, he walked between them, talking very pleasantly of the historical associations and romantic stories connected with St. Quentin Castle—a subject particularly interesting to Sydney, who was beginning to feel a certain pride in the past of the grand old house to which she belonged.

It may be presumed that his conversation pleased St. Quentin also, for his guest was shut up with him a good deal in the library, smoking and talking.

In other ways besides amusing conversation, Sir Algernon’s presence was a boon to the ladies. He was a first-rate whip, and the four-in-hand which St. Quentin used to drive was had out from the stables—where it and his shattered motor-car had stood so long idle together—for the benefit of Sir Algernon. He took Lady Frederica and Sydney out in it: one day they even went as far as Donisbro’ and lunched at the principal hotel there.

Sydney wished to lunch at the Deanery, that she might return a book Miss Morrell had lent her, but this Lady Frederica would not allow.

“If you will solemnly swear not to go into the Deanery drawing-room on any excuse [107] whatsoever, I shall be delighted to escort you to the door, Miss Lisle,” Sir Algernon suggested good-naturedly, noticing the way her face fell at Lady Frederica’s refusal. “We shouldn’t take above twenty minutes getting there and back, if you only leave the book at the door. If Lady Frederica will allow us, we will go directly after lunch, while she is choosing those cards she spoke of.”

Lady Frederica agreed readily enough to this arrangement, and the two set out together when their lunch was over, with a parting direction on her part, “Be sure you hurry, for the afternoons are so short, and we must start early on our homeward drive.”

They left the parcel with the Deanery footman, and retraced their steps through the Close and up the steep High Street of Donisbro’.

The shops were very gay with Christmas cards and presents: Sir Algernon inquired if Miss Lisle still retained a taste for turkey and plum-pudding? She answered absently, for the Christmas preparations brought back home with a painful clearness. She thought of the shopping expeditions which became so many as Christmas Eve drew on, and the numberless secrets with which the tall old [108] house seemed packed from garret to cellar, and the wild excitement of Christmas Eve; when all the boys and girls who might be trusted to be quite conformable, went out to see the brilliant show of Christmas shops under the guardianship of Hugh and Mildred.

“What’s the girl thinking of?” Sir Algernon asked himself, a little piqued, for he was not used to having his remarks received with inattention or indifference.

Then suddenly a light dawned on him, for Sydney’s eyes, which had been fixed rather absently upon the sloppy pavement before her, grew bright with recognition. She broke into a cry of joy, and in a second had sprung forward to seize both the outstretched hands of a young man, who was hurrying down the street towards her. “Oh, Hugh! Hugh!”

“By Jove!” Sir Algernon let out between his teeth, as he stood aside, forgotten by both.

“Sir Anthony had an operation to perform here,” Hugh explained, “and, like the brick he is, took me as his anæsthetist. I never thought of this luck!”

“Oh, Hugh! how are they all? How is [109] mother? Oh, dear! there are such hundreds of things I want to ask you!”

“I’m just the same. How are you, dear? Your letters are jolly, but they don’t tell a quarter that we want to know. You’re looking well.” The old brotherly approval in his eyes was replaced, the girl saw, by a new expression. “Who are you with? Are you driving, or what? Can I walk with you? You mustn’t stand in this cold.”

“No, I am sure Miss Lisle should not,” Sir Algernon interpolated suavely. “Mr. Chichester, I suppose?”

Hugh bowed and apologised. Sydney introduced the two in form, with a loving pride in speaking Hugh’s name which did not escape the baronet.

“We ought to be rejoining Lady Frederica, don’t you think?” he said to her; “we were ordered not to linger.”

“I forgot,” said Sydney. “Yes, we must go. Hugh, come too. I want to show you to Lady Frederica.”

And Hugh, against his better judgment, came. It was hard to refuse Sydney anything when the sweet face looked at him so earnestly. Besides, at home they would be hungry for news; how could he help saying yes.

He walked beside her, but confidences were impossible in the presence of Sir Algernon, although that gentleman made himself exceedingly agreeable according to his wont. Still, Hugh could look at Sydney and hear her speak, and that was something.

They reached the hotel all too soon. Lady Frederica was looking out for them and the introduction was made. She was civil, but by no means cordial, and conveyed an accent of disapproval into her polite surprise at seeing Mr. Chichester so far from town.

Sydney explained eagerly, but Lady Frederica’s “Indeed!” was discouraging, and there was a pause. Hugh felt he was expected to take his leave, and took it.

“Good-bye! Good-bye, Hugh—my love to them at home, a great deal of love, you know, Hugh. Good-bye!”

Oh, dear! how much there was that Sydney wanted to say to him! If only Lady Frederica would have left them for a little time alone! If only Sir Algernon had not been there when they met! She wanted—oh, so much!—to hear the little things that letters never tell; those little items of everyday home news for which she [111] felt so sick with longing suddenly. Why hadn’t she asked this, that, and the other? She seemed to have said nothing but good-bye. She was very quiet upon the homeward drive, so quiet that Sir Algernon looked curiously at her more than once. And when they reached the castle, and the girl had gone up to the school-room, he went into the library to St. Quentin.

“Got any views for that little girl, Quin?” he asked carelessly, when he had answered his host’s inquiries as to the conditions of the roads, the “pace of the greys,” and other details of their day.

“Don’t get riled, old man, I wasn’t offering it.” Sir Algernon lit a cigarette with great care and sat down by the fire. “It strikes me that she has views of her own, as well,” he concluded.

“Suppose we leave Sydney out of the conversation, altogether!” said St. Quentin.

“Oh, just as you please, of course. Do you want the people who brought her up—the Chichesters—to be a tabooed subject as well?”

Sir Algernon leaned back luxuriously in his chair, stretching out his feet to the cheerful blaze.

“You don’t mean to say that my aunt allowed the child to enter into conversation with him?” St. Quentin’s tone was very sharp; Sir Algernon laughed lightly.

“Don’t look so fierce, old chap. I was the guilty party, I’m afraid. I was escorting her back to Lady Frederica after leaving a parcel with some girl or other, when we ran across this young chemist’s assistant, or whatever he is. They fairly rushed into each other’s arms. I couldn’t interfere very well, you see, though I did venture to suggest, after a lengthy period of patient freezing, that there was a limit to the time he ought to keep her standing in the street. He walked with us to the hotel, and there Lady Frederica choked him off. You needn’t look so furious, Quin, there wasn’t much harm done; only I fancy Miss Sydney isn’t quite the pliable little wax saint you think her, she——”

“Oh, very well! You’ve grown uncommonly stand-offish of late, my dear chap; you’ll be [113] showing me the door next, eh?” His laugh was not particularly pleasant.

St. Quentin was frowning heavily. “You might leave me quiet a bit,” he said. “I’m not in the best of humours, to-night.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Sir Algernon, rising and flinging his cigarette away; “it’s quite unnecessary, I assure you.” And he went to Lady Frederica in the drawing-room.

“Would you go to his lordship in the library, please, ma’am, if quite convenient,” a footman said, a little later, coming to the school-room, where Sydney and Miss Osric, undeterred by the approach of dinner, were thoroughly enjoying a very late tea.

“Are you quite rested now, dear?” asked Miss Osric. “You looked tired when you came in, and I am sure, if you are tired still, Lord St. Quentin would excuse you.”

“I don’t think I’m tired,” Sydney said, and went down the wide stairs and across the hall to the library.

St. Quentin was alone, but she knew Sir Algernon had been there by the smell of smoke. Her cousin’s eyebrows were drawn close together, and there was a look upon [114] his face which was new to her. He seemed to have forgotten to smile at her entrance to-day.

“Come here, Sydney,” he said sharply. “I have something to say to you. I hear you met that young Chichester this afternoon.” His contemptuous tone made the colour flame into her face.

“Yes, I did,” she said a little bit defiantly; “of course I was going to tell you about it.”

“Were you?” said St. Quentin. “Now, Sydney, we had better understand each other. The Chichesters brought you up, and of course you owe a debt of gratitude to them in consequence. I have no objection whatsoever to your paying it—in any reasonable way. I spoke to Braemuir on the subject when he was staying here, and he promised me to use his influence towards getting some of those boys a start in life. I don’t suppose you know that, though the estate is by no means as unencumbered as I could wish, I offered to refund your doctor what he spent on you in your childhood, and——”

“He said ‘No,’ of course!” Sydney cried, with flashing eyes. “Why, I was father’s child—of course he wouldn’t be paid for keeping me!”

“Don’t indulge in heroics, please; they bore me,” St. Quentin observed drily. “Yes, Dr. Chichester—try to drop the expression ‘father,’ please, in speaking of him; it only makes you sound ridiculous—Dr. Chichester, I say, refused my offer with some heat. Like you, he appeared to consider it insulting. Tastes differ; mine is, as you know, for common sense. Now, I should be obliged if you would kindly give me your attention for five minutes. You are going to occupy a great position, and I do not intend to have those Chichesters hanging round you. Those brother-and-sister friendships are charming in theory, but they don’t work. I know what they lead to. I should be obliged if you would correspond less frequently with the doctor’s family, and shall request Aunt Rica to see to it. And I distinctly forbid you to have anything to do with that young man when next he happens to be staying in these parts. Do you understand me?”

“Do you mean you want me to forget mother and father, and all the rest of them at home?” Sydney cried. There was an odd expression on St. Quentin’s face, as he watched the growing indignation upon hers.

“Well, something like it—you won’t find [116] it very difficult in time, I assure you,” was his answer.

“I don’t mean to do it!” she said with a trembling voice. “I shall have to obey you about not writing so often, or speaking to Hugh if I meet him, but I can’t and I won’t forget them! I hate this place! I wish I had never come, and when you talk like that I hate you!... I was beginning to care about you, but I don’t now at all!” She was fighting to keep back her sobs. “Do you forget the people you have cared for, that you want me to?” she asked him fiercely, and went quickly out.

CHAPTER XI
ON THE CHURCH TOWER

On the morning following the expedition to Donisbro’, Lady Frederica received an apologetic note from Herr Felsbaden, Sydney’s music-master, regretting his inability to give Miss Lisle her lesson that day, owing to a severe cold. If convenient to Lady Frederica and Miss Lisle, he would come to the Castle on Friday afternoon instead.

The note was sent in to Miss Osric, when Lady Frederica had glanced through it over her early cup of tea, and governess and pupil read it together.

Sydney was looking pale and heavy-eyed this morning, Miss Osric saw, and guessed that Lord St. Quentin had said something to distress the girl. It was a bright sunny morning, with that exhilaration in the air which only a perfect winter’s day has the power to give.

“Suppose, as you have no master coming [118] this morning, we go out for a walk as soon as we have read a little, Sydney dear?” Miss Osric suggested. “It is such a lovely morning, and you look tired. I think the air would do you good.”

“I have a little headache,” Sydney owned, and they set out for their walk at about 10.30.

The frost was thick in the park, and every little twig upon the great bare trees outlined clearly against a sky of pale cloudless blue. Sydney wondered why she did not feel the old exhilaration that a morning such as this would have once awakened in her, even in smoky London.

But if she could not enjoy the perfect morning, they soon met somebody who could!

As they passed the gate of the Vicarage, Mr. Seaton came out, holding Pauly by the hand. The child was in a state of absolutely wild delight, dancing and jumping by his father’s side, and his eyes glittering like two stars under the tangle of red hair.

“Going up the great big ’normous tower!” he informed Sydney, as she stooped to kiss him. “Going to walk miles and miles and miles up ladders, almost to the sky!”

“I have to give some orders about new bell-ropes; ours were rotten, and I’ve had them taken down,” he explained. “And it was an old promise I should take this monkey up the tower next time I had to go there. Do you two feel inclined, I wonder, to come with us, and walk ‘miles and miles and miles up ladders, almost to the sky’?”

Sydney looked at the tower, standing grey and tall outlined sharply on the blue, and then at Miss Osric. “Should you like it? It would be lovely, I think.”

“We should like to go up very much indeed, if Mr. Seaton doesn’t mind the bother of us,” said Miss Osric, and the four went on together to Lislehurst Church at the farther end of the village.

The church itself had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century, when the black oak panelling had been removed as “dirty-looking” and replaced by whitewash, and relieved at intervals by the St. Quentin Arms painted on it in the gaudiest colours. At the same time, the few bits of exquisite stained glass which had survived a visit from the “root and branch” men of the Commonwealth days had been taken away to make room for a complete set of crudely coloured windows, which vexed the soul of Mr. [120] Seaton whenever his eyes fell upon them. But the old tower had been left intact, and was considered by the learned to be one of the finest specimens of fourteenth century architecture left in England.

There was a tradition that the saintly Bishop Ken had once climbed it, and had pronounced the view from the top to be “a foretaste of Heaven.”

Sydney, when she saw the perpendicular ladders tied together, which those who went beyond the belfry chamber were compelled to climb, doubted privately the probability of anyone so old and frail as the non-juring Bishop had grown when he came to Blankshire, having strength or breath to reach the summit!

“You are not frightened, are you?” asked the Vicar, when he had given his orders to the man awaiting him in the belfry chamber, now emptied of its dangling ropes. “Don’t try it, if you feel in the least bit nervous, for it is a stiffish climb!”

To be quite honest, Sydney did not particularly like the look of the many ladders to be scaled, but she would have died sooner than own her fears.

After all, this was not so very much more difficult than going up the ladders in that oast-house [121] in Kent, where they had gone to see the men stamp out a hop-pocket, when the whole family had spent that happy fortnight in a Kentish farm-house last summer. Only then Hugh had been there to help her, and pull her up that awkward step where two rungs had gone from the ladder. Her back was to the Vicar, but Miss Osric saw the sudden wistfulness in the girl’s grey eyes.

“Well, come on, if you really don’t feel nervous,” Mr. Seaton said. “Oh, Hiram,” as the old clerk came stumbling down the ladders at the sound of their voices, “you here? That’s just as well. Now you can go up in front and get the little tower door open for the ladies.”

“All right; he won’t interfere with us,” the Vicar said. “Now, Miss Lisle, will you go first, and take Hiram’s hand where the ladders cross. Miss Osric, you next. Then Pauly. Hold tight, you little monkey, or I’ll take you down again! I’ll bring up the rear, and then if anybody slips, I’ll catch them.”

The procession started, Mr. Seaton keeping a firm grip of his small son’s blouse the whole time, and calling at intervals directions to the others.

Up, up they went, clinging to the ladders set perpendicularly against the rough grey walls, worn with the lapse of time. Higher and higher still they went, till Sydney and Miss Osric felt as though they had been climbing for hours instead of minutes.

The elders had no breath for speech, but little Pauly chattered unceasingly. “Did these funny stairs go right up into Heaven? Would there be angels at the top of the tower? Would there be stars? Would there be at least a hole through which Pauly might look into Heaven when he came so near it?”

Sydney could hear his shrill little voice talking on, and his father’s grave tones answering him now and then. As they came higher the echoes caught up the two voices and made the old tower ring with them in a way that sounded strange and very eerie, Sydney thought.

“Getting tired, Miss Lisle?” called the Vicar cheerily, as she set foot on the highest ladder.

His words must have been heard by “the gentleman” of whom old Hiram had spoken, for a square of blue and sunshine opened suddenly above her, and, as she toiled up the final rungs, a hand, whose touch was certainly [123] familiar, grasped hers, and swung her over that last awkward step, where she seemed to hang over a yawning black gulf for a moment, before landing upon terra firma outside the tower.

“Hugh!” She had forgotten everything for the moment, except the joy of seeing him again, but in an instant, like a bitter wind, her cousin’s words swept back upon her—“I forbid you to have anything to do with that young man.”

Hugh could not think why she withdrew her hand, and went back to the little low tower door with a cloud on the face that had been so bright a minute since. “How slow the others are in getting up!” she said.

Hugh watched her uneasily, as she gave her hand to Miss Osric and helped her through the doorway; then proceeded to the same office for little Pauly. Surely it was very unlike Sydney to have nothing to say to him, to be absorbed in these comparative strangers, when he was at her elbow. Surely her manner had changed with extraordinary speed since yesterday.

She on her part had been rapidly considering the situation. It was plainly impossible to go down the tower again the very minute [124] after she had come up it. What excuse could she make that had the slightest sound of reason? None, she was quite aware. Plainly the only thing that she could do was to obey her cousin’s order in the spirit though not in the letter.

She was rather pale, but her voice was steady as she bent over little Pauly, devoting herself to answering his many questions.

Mr. Seaton talked to Miss Osric and to Hugh, who answered him a little absently. His eyes were fixed on Sydney. The Vicar looked from one to the other in a rather puzzled way from time to time, as he did the honours of the splendid view that lay before them.

Glimpses of the Castle showed through its encircling trees, but in summer, Mr. Seaton said, when all the leaves were out, it was completely hidden.

He pointed out in succession the quaint little villages, dotted at intervals about the valley, with some interesting comment upon each. There was Loam, which boasted the finest chancel-screen in the county. Miss Lisle and Miss Osric ought to see it one of these bright days: it was most distinctly worth the trouble of a visit. That tiny church, with a tower that looked as though some giant had sat upon it long ago, was Marston. Did Mr. [125] Chichester remember a humorous account in the papers two or three years back, of a famous “kill” which had taken place in Marston churchyard, when the fox had taken refuge in one of the old stone box tombs, and held the narrow entry, worn by age and weather in the stone, for full an hour?

Styles and Hurstleigh lay out yonder; it was in Hurstleigh that the Manor stood, which a loyal lady of the Civil Wars had defended against General Ireton, till relieved by her husband just as the little garrison were reduced to the last straits.

At another time Sydney would have been immensely interested in the story, but to-day somehow she could not care even to see the place where Madam Courtenay caught the first glimpse of the scarlet mantled horsemen, riding to her succour only just in time.

She could not put herself to-day into the place of the cavalier lady and rejoice with her; she could only feel herself, Sydney Lisle, behaving in a horrid, stiff, unkind way to the brother Hugh, who kept looking at her with those troubled, questioning eyes.

Miss Osric was the only member of the party who really enjoyed Mr. Seaton’s explanations, for little Pauly thought them dull to the [126] last degree. He wanted to know several things, and no one would attend to his shrill questions. Sydney was looking where Mr. Seaton pointed, with unseeing eyes, and his father took no notice of various impatient tugs at his hand. Pauly wanted dreadfully to know why the sky had gone away again, instead of being quite near as he had expected, and whether mother and the angels would hear him if he were to call up to them very loudly, now this minute, and whether a big man, who was big enough to lean over the stone parapet of the tower which his own head barely reached, could see “In Memory of Rose” on the white marble cross in the churchyard down below.

Hugh, to pacify him, looked over, and pronounced that he could see “no end of crosses.”

But this by no means satisfied Pauly. Hugh must see that special grave where Daddy took him every Sunday, after service.

“Tell me where to look,” Hugh said; “but you keep still, young man, if you please. Don’t you go trying to lean over!”

He stared down. “Is your cross a tall one, near a tree?” he asked presently. Pauly gave a bound of delight.

“Yes, that’s where ‘In memorwy of Wose’ is. Do you see the lovely holly on the grave? [127] I stuck lots in the tin, I did weally, and my fingers was all bleedy after. I didn’t mind. Boys don’t mind being bleedy. ’Spect that big girl that you keep on looking at would mind. Girls cwy when they’re bleedy, don’t they? Do you cwy? I s’pose not,’cause you’re a big man. Did you see my lovely holly? No, you won’t see where you are. Oh, look! You can see my lovely holly this side of the tower as well.”

“I say—stand still!” Hugh said sharply, turning his head round. Pauly, in a state of wild excitement, was climbing up the three-foot parapet as nimbly as a cat. “Get down!” Hugh shouted, springing to his feet, and darting over to the child. He spoke too late.

Pauly had reached the top, and was kneeling on it, peering down upon his “lovely holly.” “Oh, I can see it! I can see my holly!” he screamed joyfully, clinging and laughing.

Whether the height turned him giddy, or he lost his balance by leaning too far, no one knew. There was only time for a cry of horror, and a frantic grasp into emptiness upon Hugh’s part. The child had fallen from the parapet!

The poor father staggered backward, his hand to his head—the two girls clung together, speechless; only Hugh was able to [128] look over. The next moment he was shaking Mr. Seaton fiercely by the shoulder.

“Quick, sir! Down and cut the belfry ropes. Please God, we’ll save him yet!”

Some nine feet down the tower, at each corner, a large projecting gargoyle served the purpose of a water-spout, and it was on one of these little Pauly had fallen—the creature’s stone ear having caught his blouse as he bumped against it in his fall. He was lying on his back across the gargoyle’s neck, his legs and head swinging into space, his frock hitched half across the hideous head. He was still at the moment, but how long would he remain so? Below him was a drop of seventy feet.

Hugh flung off his coat, and put his leg over the parapet. “Hurry with the ropes; I’ll go to him.”

But Hugh was already letting himself down. “Quick with the ropes!” was all he said.

Before they had finished speaking, Mr. Seaton was tearing in a neck-or-nothing fashion [131] down the ladders. It was well for him that he was forced to act, and not wait to think. Ropes must be got, and immediately, for what ladder would be long enough? He did not even cast one glance back at the tower as he rushed through the churchyard in search of a rope.

There was nothing that Miss Osric and Sydney had the power to do but wait and pray. They clung to one another silently, with set, white faces, as Hugh commenced his difficult and dangerous descent, with one eye on the little figure, which might move and be dashed from its precarious resting-place at any moment. Was the child stunned? Hugh almost hoped he might be. Any movement must almost certainly be fatal to his balance.

But as the young man felt carefully his third step in that perilous climb, there was a quiver in the dark blue bundle on the gargoyle, and a scared little face was uplifted to his. The hearts of the girls above stood still.

Hugh was struggling desperately for a foothold which it seemed impossible to find. Would the child move, or look down? Should he do so, nothing could save him.

“It’s all right, old chap!” Hugh called in his cheeriest tone. “You just keep still where you are. Yes, that’s right; now look at me. [132] I’m coming down to take you up again. No, don’t try and sit up—you can see me splendidly from where you are.”

His voice broke off, as he all but lost both hold and footing. He regained it with a frantic struggle and descended another step. “Look at me, Pauly!”

Pauly’s round eyes gazed up wonderingly. Hugh neared the gargoyle, and set his teeth for a mighty effort.

Pauly was a particularly large and strong boy for not quite five years old, and, even on firm ground, would be no joke to lift in one hand. But the thing must be done. Hugh strengthened his hold with his right hand, and took an anxious downward glance. Some of the village men were trying to join ladders, but they were far too short. Mr. Seaton was running frantically up the road beyond the churchyard, with a coil of rope on his arm. In the clear air Hugh could see his upturned face, dead white, with eyes staring wildly.

He could not possibly get through the churchyard and up the tower in less than ten minutes—Hugh thought he would probably take longer. It was not therefore possible to risk leaving Pauly on the gargoyle till he himself should have the help of a rope.

He took the firmest grip he could of the roughened stonework of the tower with feet and right hand, and loosed cautiously the other, reaching with it towards the blue bundle on the gargoyle. “Steady, Pauly, keep quite still, old chap!”

With a struggle that brought beads of perspiration out upon his forehead and nearly sent him flying into space, he grasped the child, and raised him slowly from his resting-place; then stepped down on to the gargoyle, and stood there, clasping Pauly closely, and leaning back against the wall with closed eyes.

He was too physically exhausted with the terrible anxiety and effort of the last few minutes to make any further movement then. Besides, it was now a necessity to wait for the rope. The upward climb would be impossible when burdened by the well-grown boy.

He had to concentrate all his powers on keeping steady on the slender foothold, which was all the gargoyle afforded, and waiting for the help which Mr. Seaton would bring.

It seemed hours before a shout from above came down cheerily to him, and a rope end struck him on the shoulder. “Now, Pauly,” he said, “hold on round my neck for all you’re worth, there’s a good little chap!”

He took a firm grip of the child’s blouse in his teeth, and, steadying himself with infinite difficulty, fastened the rope beneath his own arms, in the strongest knots that he could make. Then, using his hands as a trumpet, he called “Ready!”

His left arm was round Pauly, his right grasped the rope above his head. “Now hold tight, little chap, and don’t be frightened!”

Pauly carried out this order by taking as good a grip as the hair-cutter allowed of Hugh’s head, and it was in this position that the two were at length hauled over the parapet by the united strength of the Vicar, Hiram, and the Vicarage gardener, whom Mr. Seaton had met while searching for a rope.

Mr. Seaton wrung Hugh’s hand in silence, and held his son to him, in silence also. No one seemed to have much voice for speech just then; even Pauly was subdued and shaken by his fall, though he had escaped with nothing worse than grazed knees.

The descent from the tower was very quiet and sober. A strong shudder went through the party as they passed the belfry chamber and thought about the awful moment when they had realised that the ropes were gone.

His father carried Pauly, and Hugh went [135] in front of Sydney and Miss Osric, and gave them his hand where the ladders turned. He and Sydney never spoke the whole way down.

They were in the churchyard at last, and Pauly was demanding to be shown “the funny little step where me and him was standing.” The Vicar, shivering, hushed him, and turned to Hugh. “You’ll come in and lunch with me?” he said, a little huskily, his hand upon the young man’s shoulder.

“And, Sydney, we must hurry back,” Miss Osric suggested. “I am sure it is getting late.”

She went to Hugh and held out her hand. “Good-bye, Hugh. Please understand,” she said very low.

Hugh took the little gloved hand in his, and read rightly the trouble in her eyes.

CHAPTER XII
MERRY CHRISTMAS

“What a lot of times I seem to have said ‘Merry Christmas’ this afternoon!” Sydney remarked as she and Miss Osric went round the village in Sydney’s little pony carriage with the pair of lovely little bay ponies she so much enjoyed driving. “And the sad thing is, that nobody here seems to feel particularly happy,” she went on. “Mrs. Andrews, to whom I took that crossover just now, said—‘It was hard enough to feel joyful when her man was bent double with rheumatism from the dampness of his cottage!’ Miss Osric, are the cottages in very bad repair here? Lord Braemuir seemed to think so, and so do the people who live in them. But when I asked Lady Frederica she said—‘Poor people always grumbled; if it wasn’t one thing, it was sure to be another!’ What do you think?”

“Well, Sydney,” she said at length, “I don’t [137] know whether I ought to tell you this, but it seems to me right you should know something of the cottages on the estate. It will be your business to know by-and-by. You know my father is chaplain to the hospital at Donisbro’, and he has often told me that the amount of cases coming from the cottages on this estate is appalling. People have been brought to the hospital from Loam and Lislehurst, and even Styles, where the ground is higher, simply crippled with rheumatism, and off and on there have been a good many cases of diphtheria and fever. That doesn’t speak well for the cottages, you know.”

“I shall ask Mr. Fenton,” she said slowly; “I don’t think I could ask St. Quentin.”

“I think asking Mr. Fenton is not at all a bad idea,” Miss Osric said cordially; “but, my dear Sydney, we mustn’t dawdle here in the cold even to discuss points of duty. Have you any more presents to distribute?”

“Just one for Pauly at the Vicarage,” the girl said, gathering up the reins again; “that is the parcel underneath the seat that you said took up as much room as we did. It’s a horse and waggon—a horse with real hair—and I [138] think Pauly will be able to get himself into the waggon if he tucks his legs up. I’m sure he will be pleased—the darling!”

“I wonder how long that quarter’s allowance is going to last,” laughed Miss Osric, as they turned the ponies’ heads up the drive to the Vicarage. “You’ve been so lavish over Christmas presents, Sydney; that parcel for London alone must have nearly ruined you!”

“I am rather near bankruptcy,” owned Sydney. “It is shocking to confess, but I never had such a lot of money to spend in my life, and I went and spent it. But I am not a bit sorry,” she concluded, “for, just for once, they will have at home exactly what they wanted.” Pauly had seen them coming from the window of his father’s study, against which he was flattening his small round nose till it looked exactly like a white button. He flew to the door and cast himself upon them in the hall with a shriek of delight.

“Oh, do you know, it’s going to be Chwistmas Day to-morrow!” he exclaimed, “and I am going to church in the morning like a big man, and Santa Claus is coming in the night, daddy finks, to put fings in my stocking, ’cause I’ve been a very good boy for years and not runned away or been lostened!”

The Vicar, too, was not behindhand in his welcome, though he was not quite so conversational as his little son.

“Come into the study, both of you,” he said; “we’ve got a real Yule log there, haven’t we, Pauly?—such a monster!—and I’m sure you must be frozen.”

The Sydney of six weeks ago would have accepted Mr. Seaton’s offer, but the Sydney of to-day had learned to think what would annoy her cousin and Lady Frederica.

“I am afraid we must hurry back, mustn’t we, Miss Osric?” she said. “We shall be rather late as it is. We have been all round the village, wishing ever so many people a happy Christmas, so we must only just wish the same to you, and ask you to tell Santa Claus to see if he can’t find a rather large, knobby parcel in the corner of the hall for Pauly, when he comes to visit you to-night.”

“It’s very good of you,” said the Vicar. “Pauly, don’t tear Miss Lisle’s clothes to pieces in your joy. You spoil him, you know, Miss Lisle, if you will allow me to say so. Well, if you must go, a very happy Christmas to you both! You are going the right way to make it a happy one, I think.”

“Mr. Seaton, one thing,” Sydney asked [140] as they went through the hall together. “Are the people miserable here because their cottages want rebuilding?”

Mr. Seaton looked at the earnest face beside him, and wondered if the wish to help her poorer neighbours would continue when she had the power.

“Yes,” he said, “I am sorry to own that most of the cottages here are in a very neglected condition. But landlords have no easy time of it, I know, and often lack the means to do all they want.”

“Thank you,” said Sydney, and then she kissed little Pauly, and she and Miss Osric got into the carriage and drove away, the Vicar watching them, with his small son, riotous and conversational, on his shoulder, till they turned out into the road again.

“I don’t think I ever knew anybody more devoted to a child than that man is,” said Miss Osric, as they reached the lodge gates. “What would he have done if he had lost him the other day?”

“One is expected to be so aggressively cheerful and social,” she complained, “when [141] one is really feeling bored to extinction! And now St. Quentin’s illness casts a gloom over everything; it is most absurd to attempt any feeling of festivity. He wouldn’t like it at all.”

“Did Cousin St. Quentin care for Christmas when he was well?” Sydney asked a little wistfully.

“Well, I remember one year, when both his father and mother were alive, they had the regular old-fashioned sort of Christmas, and he certainly seemed to enjoy it. The Dean of Donisbro’ and his daughter Katharine were here, I remember. The Dean had slipped upon a slide some tiresome boy had made when he came over to dine here the week before Christmas, and he fell and sprained his ankle. Of course Dr. Lorry wouldn’t let him travel, so St. Quentin got poor dear Alicia, his mother, to go to Donisbro’ herself and bring back Miss Morrell to spend Christmas with her father. There were only those two, you see. My dear, Katharine Morrell was a pretty girl in those days! You’ve seen her, haven’t you? but she has gone off a good deal. I fancy St. Quentin admired her rather, but it didn’t come to anything, though we all thought it would that Christmas-time. But [142] she was a good deal too strait-laced for him, I expect; not that he was worse than other young man, but he ran through a lot of money on cards and racing, and annoyed his poor father very much. Oh! Sir Algernon, is that you?” (Sir Algernon had entered at the moment). “I was telling Sydney of that Christmas when the Dean and Miss Morrell were here. I forget if you have met Katharine Morrell?”

Sydney saw a strange expression cross the handsome face for a moment. But in a second he had answered in his usual rather languid accents, “Yes, I know her slightly; very slightly.”

Christmas Day dawned clear and sunny and Sydney, as she stood beside Lady Frederica in the Castle pew at Lislehurst Church, felt something of the joy of Christmas coming to her, even in this strange place. She smiled across at little Pauly, who, standing beside Mr. Seaton’s housekeeper, was singing, “Hark! the herald angels sing” with all his might, and to a time and tune quite his own.

Mr. Seaton’s sermon was very short; he said he thought the Christmas hymns and carols preached a better sermon than he had the power to do. He only asked his people [143] to remember that next to God’s glory, the angels had set peace and goodwill upon earth. The second followed on the first. He wanted all those who had to-day been glorifying God for His great Christmas Gift, to see to it that peace and goodwill was not lacking in that small part of God’s earth that concerned each—his or her own home.

Sydney had not seen her cousin since her outburst on the subject of the Chichesters, and her conscience pricked her. It was true that St. Quentin had expressed no wish to see her, but she had made no attempt to find out if he had one unexpressed. Surely the first move towards that peace and goodwill of which Mr. Seaton spoke should come from her!

She and Lady Frederica drove home together; Sydney full of eagerness for the post, which would have come while they were at church.

Lady Frederica laughed, and said Sydney was “the most childish girl for her age she had ever known”; but when they reached the Castle, she fastened a dainty little pearl brooch into the collar of the girl’s frock, with a “There, my dear, is a Christmas present for you!”

Sydney was a good deal touched by this kindness from one who generally seemed dissatisfied with her, but still she was undoubtedly relieved when Lady Frederica told her that she might take her parcels and letters to her rooms and amuse herself as she liked till luncheon. Lady Frederica, it appeared, was going to rest after the tremendous exertion of getting up sufficiently early to attend eleven o’clock service!

Sydney and Miss Osric spent a blissful hour over the letters and presents. I think Sydney cried a little over those with the London post-mark, for Christmas-time with its associations had made her more homesick than she knew.

They had all written to the absent one, and there were presents from everybody. No one had forgotten her, from old nurse down to Prissie. Sydney and Miss Osric undid parcels and munched home-made toffee with a noble disregard for the spoiling of their appetites, until the luncheon gong sounded, by which time the morning-room where they were sitting looked exactly like a Christmas bazaar.

But Sydney had not forgotten her morning’s resolution, and when lunch was over and Lady Frederica, exhausted, doubtless, by her unaccustomed early rising, had fallen asleep in [145] her chair, Sydney got up and moved softly from the gold drawing-room, crossed the hall, and tapped lightly at the door of the library.

Sir Algernon was with his host, and both men looked up as she entered. The excitement of the home letters had brought a flush to her face, and her eyes were very bright. Sir Algernon let his cigarette drop from between his fingers as he looked at her. “By Jove!” he muttered.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” said Sydney, flushing under his cool survey. “I only”—with an unconsciously appealing glance in the direction of the sofa—“I only came to give my Christmas wishes to you, Cousin St. Quentin.”

“Thanks,” said St. Quentin, holding out his hand to her. “You’re going for a stroll in the park, aren’t you, Bridge?”

“Ah, yes, of course I am,” his friend answered. “Have a look round at the timber, eh, Quin? Miss Lisle, I hope you made my humble apologies to the Vicar for not attending church this morning. Oh, all right!” in answer to a rather impatient sound from the sofa. “I’m off, old man. Ta-ta!”

Sydney was uncompromising in her views at all times. “Not at all,” she said.

If she had been looking at St. Quentin at the moment she would have seen an expression of relief on his face at her answer. But she was looking round the room, which certainly was rather untidy.

“Wouldn’t you like the hearth swept, and these cards put away in their case, and the papers in a drawer?” she asked her cousin. “I don’t believe Dickson has been in here since this morning, has he?”

“Yes, in the second drawer of the writing-table, left hand side. Lock it, please, and give me the key.”

She obeyed him, then swept up the hearth, regardless of his “Ring for Dickson!” and finally sat down in the great brown leather chair by the fireside.

“ Must you do business with Sir Algernon? I am sure it can’t be very good for you. You are looking much more ill. I don’t think Dr. Lorry would like it.”

“Is it to do with money?” she asked, with a remembrance of a certain pucker on father’s brow, which Christmas bills brought with them.

“Partly; not all. Let’s talk of something else, instead of boring you with my affairs,” her cousin said.

“They don’t bore me. Of course I care to know your bothers!” she declared.

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her in a considering kind of way. “Do you? I wonder why?” He laughed a little. “Go ahead and talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve done to-day. I suppose you had letters by the ream from your beloved Chichesters?”

Sydney reddened, remembering their last interview upon that subject. Her cousin seemed to recollect it too.

“Has it ever struck you that you’ll have a much better time of it when I’m gone?” he said. “As long as you look pretty and walk [148] into a room the right way, Aunt Rica won’t interfere with you much.”

“How can you?” the girl cried, with hot indignation. “I hate to hear you talk like that! Why, you’ve been very kind to me—except about the Chichesters!”

“And that’s a rather big exception, isn’t it?” St. Quentin said. “You haven’t got much cause to like me, Sydney.”

“I do care about you!” she said. “You say those horrid things about the Chichesters just because you don’t understand, that’s all. Some day, perhaps, you will know that one couldn’t give up loving people, even if one tried. But I do care about you, really! I think you are the very bravest person that I ever met!”

St. Quentin did not answer for a minute, and when he spoke, though it was lightly, his voice was not quite so steady as usual.

“Is it very rude to suggest to a lady, who is going to reach the advanced age of eighteen in a few days’ time, that her experience of life may possibly be limited?” he said. “My dear child, I regret to say you’re out in your conception of my character. I am a [149] coward. Of course, I hope one is enough of a man not to make a fuss over the inevitable, by which I mean the consequences of my motor-smash. What is, is, and only fools whine over it. But for all that, I’m a coward. There, let’s talk of something else!” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Tell me what you like.”

And Sydney told him about Lady Frederica and her present; about Pauly and the hymn; and everything else she could think of that might amuse or interest him.

She told of the knobby parcels they had taken round the village in the pony-carriage yesterday, and of the fright of one old woman when a rolled-up pair of thick stockings had slipped from Sydney’s over-laden arms, and gone rolling across the kitchen floor to her very feet.

“What are you thinking of?” her cousin asked, looking across at the creamy-gowned figure in the brown chair.

“I was thinking of the cottages,” she answered. “They are so wretched and so damp, St. Quentin, and the people told me there could be no ‘Merry Christmas’ for them!”

“That meddling parson has been putting you up to that idea, I suppose!” he said sharply.

“No, I saw the cottages for myself. Oh, St. Quentin, can’t something be done?”

She looked at him with troubled eyes. “I expect I cost a good deal of money. Couldn’t I have fewer frocks and things of that kind? Or perhaps,” with an effort, “we might sell Bessie: keeping a horse is so expensive, I’ve heard father say.”

St. Quentin’s voice was stern as he stopped her. “Don’t talk of what you do not understand. I can do nothing for the cottages at present. If it’s any consolation to you, I will tell you this—I wish I could. There; talk of something else, for goodness’ sake!”

She talked on, though feeling little in the mood for conversation, and was rewarded by his exclamation of astonishment on learning the lateness of the hour when Dickson came in to light the lamp.

“Why, I’ve kept you here two mortal hours, forgetting all about the time; you must be sick of me! A nice way to make you spend your Christmas Day! However, you’ve made mine a bit more cheerful.”

As the girl passed his sofa on the way to the door, he took her hand, saying, “Have you forgiven me for what I said about the Chichesters the other day?”

And Sydney, remembering that morning’s sermon, said “Yes,” with all her heart.

CHAPTER XIII
HUGH’S BATTLE

Dr. Chichester flung the question suddenly into the deep silence which had fallen on himself and his son, as they sat together by the study fire on a cold night shortly after Christmas.

Dr. Chichester had said it was a bitter night, and Hugh had assented. The doctor had remarked that a fire and a book were wonderfully soothing after a long day’s work, and Hugh had owned the fact. The doctor had opined that if the frost lasted, there would shortly be skating on the Serpentine. Hugh had agreed to that as well, but in so absent and spiritless a manner that his father plainly saw he took no interest whatever in the skating prospects at the present moment.

And after these attempts at conversation, silence had fallen on them, and the doctor, [153] forgetful of the book upon his knee, closely scrutinised the young face before him, with its dark, sad eyes fixed on the glowing fire.

Hugh had been curiously silent ever since that visit to Donisbro’, his father thought to himself.

And yet, how pleased he had been at being singled out by Sir Anthony to go with him! And he had come back, having done everything required of him successfully enough, so far as his father could make out. But he had been very uncommunicative over his adventures in the quaint cathedral city.

It had been left for Sir Anthony to catch the doctor on the staircase of Blue-friars’ Hospital, and ask him if “the boy had remembered to tell his father that Sir Anthony had said he was a credit to the medical profession.” Hugh had not even mentioned the great man’s rare commendation.

What had he said about that visit? The doctor went over in his own mind the rather bald account which the united efforts of the family had with difficulty pumped out.

Yes, Hugh had seen Sydney. She was looking very well—this in answer to a question from Mrs. Chichester. She had sent her love to them all. There hadn’t been much time; [154] Lady Frederica had been in a great hurry to be off. There was a man with Sydney, a Sir Algernon Bridge. Was he nice?—a query from Dolly. Well, Hugh hadn’t asked him, but considered that he looked a sneery brute, although not wishing to say anything against him. Yes, he had seen Sydney again: she was up the church tower with the Vicar, who seemed a good sort, and his boy, a jolly little chap. The incident of Pauly’s rescue somehow failed to transpire at all. No, he hadn’t been to the Castle—this in reply to some excited inquiries on the subject of merry-go-rounds from Fred and Prissie. He had lunched with the Vicar, who had said that Sydney was interested in the cottages, and took the people soup and things. Hugh didn’t think anything much else had happened. Oh, how was Sydney dressed? He didn’t know—something blue, he thought. No, something red, and fur—a lot of fur. Was she looking pretty? How should he know?

Hugh had become a little irritable at this point, his father recollected: a circumstance almost as unprecedented as his gravity and silence.

The keen-eyed doctor noted his dejected [155] attitude, and the wistfulness of the gaze turned so persistently upon the fire. If Hugh was reading his future there it certainly was not a bright one.

Dr. Chichester watched in silence for full another ten minutes, then repeated his question with a hand upon the young man’s knee.

Hugh started and flushed hotly, becoming conscious of his father’s scrutiny. Then he pulled himself together, and said, with a lightness of tone which was rather obviously assumed for convenience’ sake at the moment, “Oh, nothing, sir. I was thinking, that’s all.”

“Father, do you mind if I go out to my chum, Haviland, in New Zealand? He wants a partner and—and—I want to go.”

“You have a very good position at the Blue-friars, Hugh,” he said at length. “Do you want to throw that up?”

“I know it seems foolish,” he said, “but [156] I’ve a fancy for trying new ground, and Haviland is beginning to establish a practice, and——”

“And you want to get as far away from England as you can?” his father quietly suggested.

Hugh’s back was turned towards him and he did not answer. The doctor went to his son, and put an arm through his.

“Well, I see you know,” cried poor Hugh. “I always cared specially for Sydney, more than I did for Mildred, or Dolly, or the rest. I didn’t know why—just I did. And then she got carried off by this Lord St. Quentin, and you bet they mean to marry her to that idiot with a drawl and eye-glass, who was with her at Donisbro’. She was quite different on the church tower, but I saw that she minded, bless her! Of course I tried to make her think I was all right. I couldn’t have her worry herself thinking I was angry at the way she treated me. She wasn’t to blame, anyway. I think she thought I was—all right; but I must get right away from England and forget it all. There’s no other way.”

“There is,” said the doctor. “Look here, [157] my boy. This is a hard thing for you, I know; but running away from a trouble is not the best way of getting over it, by any means. I’m not going to talk to you about the help you are at home with the younger boys, nor what it will mean to your mother and myself if we have to give up our eldest son. You are a man, making your own way in the world, and you have a perfect right to judge for yourself. More, if you find the struggle too hard for you to face, and face cheerfully, I counsel you to go abroad, and start a new life there. If at the end of a week you still want to go to New Zealand, I’m not the man to put difficulties in your path. My poor boy, I wish I could say to you, as they do in novels, ‘Make yourself worthy of our little girl’s acceptance, and then Love will win.’ I can’t say that, but I can tell you something finer still: Make yourself worthy to love her, and some day you’ll thank God, Who gave you the love, though not its earthly fulfilment. I wouldn’t wish you not to love the child, for love is God’s best gift. Only take it as God meant His gifts to be taken—thankfully, and not asking more than He is pleased to offer. Do you remember our little girl going wild over that copy of ‘Dorothy Osborne’s Letters,’ [158] which I got for her last birthday, and reading bits aloud whenever she could get a listener? Dorothy Osborne’s lover called himself her ‘servant.’ There, that’s something for you to think of, eh, my boy? True love wants to serve humbly and not grasp.”

“Who knows that she may not?” said the doctor with a smile. “But decide nothing in a hurry, dear boy; and go to bed now, for it’s after one.”

“Just one thing more?” Hugh said, his hand on the door. “You—you would rather that I stuck to the Blue-friars, I suppose?”

“I would rather you did what seems best to you when you have thought it over for a week,” the doctor said. “Good-night, and God bless you, my boy.”

“Good-night, father,” Hugh said, and so went thoughtfully upstairs to his attic bedroom, leaving the doctor to sit down again over the dying fire, and think sadly of his boy’s trouble, this cloud which seemed so little likely to roll away.

That week was a very long one to the doctor and to Hugh’s mother; the others were [159] in ignorance of the decision in course of making.

Hugh was very quiet all the time, doing his work day by day, and when at home noting all that went on with a new observance.

But when the appointed day arrived, he seemed suddenly to have cast off his troubles.

His father and mother exchanged glances as he romped with Fred and Prissie before they went to bed, and seemed in all ways to have returned to his old cheery self.

“What shall we do without him?” was the thought in both their minds, for they could not doubt his high spirits to be caused by the thought of beginning on a new life with the old troubles left behind him.

The evening came to an end at last, and all the juniors except Hugh and Mildred had retired to bed.

Hugh fidgeted with the lamp for a minute, and then threw himself down upon the rug, his head upon his mother’s knee. She smoothed his hair with loving fingers. “Well, dear?”

“Well, I wrote to Haviland this morning and declined his offer,” Hugh answered; “told him I had too good a berth at the Blue-friars to [160] throw it up, but ‘thanked him kindly all the same,’ and——”

“You’re going to stay, my boy?” his father cried, in a voice that was not quite so firm as usual.

CHAPTER XIV
AT THE DEANERY

“This is delightful!” Sydney cried, as she sat down beside the bright fire in the pretty bedroom near Katharine’s, which had been allotted to her at the Deanery. “It is quite too lovely of you to ask me, and it is quite too lovely of them to let me come! I never thought I should be allowed to, and Lady Frederica said ‘No’ at first, and I mustn’t go visiting because of not being ‘out’; but St. Quentin stood by me, and said everyone had holidays at Christmas-time, and I should go if I wanted. You can guess how much I did want; even now it seems too good to be true!”

“Well, I am very pleased to have you, dear,” Katharine said, smiling across at the girl, “though I wish it were for longer than two days. There is so much I want to hear. I miss the calisthenic class now that there are Christmas holidays for everybody. How did [162] you spend Christmas, and how is your cousin?”

“I hoped he might be better because he didn’t seem getting worse,” Sydney said a little sadly; “but Dr. Lorry doesn’t seem to think so. He says St. Quentin must get weaker, and that it is only his splendid constitution makes him fight so long.”

“Well, you haven’t told me yet how you spent Christmas?” Katharine asked, rousing herself with an effort.

“And he is at the Castle now? Sydney dear, promise me, don’t have more to do than you can help with that man!”

Sydney hardly knew the quiet girl; her eyes were flashing, and there was a bright colour in her face.

“I can’t bear him!” she said; “and I don’t see a great deal of him—at least, I did not, but since Christmas Day he has been more with Miss Osric and me.”

“Have as little to do with him as possible,” said Katharine earnestly. “Your cousin ought not to allow him to be with you. I will tell you something about him, Sydney, and then you will see what I mean.”

She played nervously for a minute with the fire-screen on her knee, then began, speaking low.

“It is a story about a girl, not very much older than you are, whose life was spoiled because she listened to him. This girl cared for a man very much indeed, and he cared for her; only she would not be engaged, because the man did not care enough to give up his faults and extravagances for her sake.

“But she did care, more than you can understand! Sir Algernon knew her, and one day he asked her to marry him. She said ‘No,’ of course, and he was angry, for he guessed about this other man.... Then—I don’t know how to tell you, Sydney dear—a very dreadful thing happened.... The man she cared for was suspected of doing an exceedingly dishonourable action. The girl was away from home when this—thing—happened, so she knew nothing till she came back. The first thing she did when she heard, [164] was to snatch up pen and paper and write a letter to the man she loved, telling him that she did not believe a word against him, and only cared for him more if possible than she had done before....”

“That’s the kind of thing you would have done!” cried Sydney; “please go on. Wasn’t the man very, very pleased to get the letter?”

Katharine knelt down to stir the fire, although it did not stand in any need of stirring.

“She never sent the letter, Sydney dear.... She had just addressed it when Sir Algernon came in. He told her he had come to ask for her advice. He had had a letter, seeming to come from some poor woman in distress, he said, and asking for his help. Knowing the girl was interested in such cases, he asked her if she would read the letter, and tell him if she thought the case one suited for his help....

“Of course the girl said ‘Yes,’ and he gave her a dirty envelope, looking very carefully inside it first, she saw, though she hardly noticed at the time. He told her, as he gave it to her, that she would need to read it very carefully and slowly, as the woman was exceedingly illiterate.... It was written in a cramped, odd hand-writing, but it was quite correctly spelled. When the girl had read about half, she saw that [165] the letter was from no poor woman ... but from the man she cared for, and oh, Sydney! it seemed to show beyond possibility of doubt that he was guilty of this dreadful meanness in which the girl had refused to believe.... Sir Algernon pretended to be dreadfully distressed when the girl gave him back the half-read letter, and said he must have put this by mistake into the wrong envelope, and he never should forgive himself, for he had promised to suppress the man’s letter, because they had been friends. And the girl thought he was very generous!

“When he had gone, she put that loving letter in the fire, and wrote another to the man she loved, not mentioning the letter she had seen, but merely saying that she never wished to see or hear of him again! I think, even then, she half hoped for some explanation from him, but none came. She was very miserable, Sydney.”

“I think she deserved to be!” Sydney cried. “Why, if she really cared for the man, how could she help believing in him?—all the more if things went against him. I don’t believe she loved him!”

She wondered as she spoke why her friend looked so white, even in the dancing fire-light.

“She did care, but not enough,” said Katharine Morrell, and there was a pause.

“Did she ever get to know?” asked Sydney, after waiting in vain for her to go on.

“Yes, by-and-by, when she had thought about it more, and grown older, and heard more about Sir Algernon. She felt sure then that the man she loved was innocent of that dishonourable action: that he could not have been guilty of it. And she guessed that Sir Algernon had given her the note to read on purpose that she might act as she did. He had set a trap for her, but she would not have fallen into it if she had only had more love and trust and patience.”

“When she knew, did she write to the man and tell him?” Sydney questioned earnestly.

“No, dear, she couldn’t. The man had given up caring, for one thing, you see. No, that is the end of the story! I am afraid there is no ‘lived happily ever after’ to finish this. I only tell you of it, because I want you to be warned against Sir Algernon.” There was a silence in the pretty room; then Katharine rose a little wearily. “Good-night, dear; don’t be worried by that girl’s story, which is all past and gone. Only be warned, [167] as I wish she had been warned, against Sir Algernon.”

Sydney thought a good deal of Katharine’s words during the busy, happy day which followed, when she seemed plunged back for the time being into the merry Sydney of home. There was a Christmas-tree at the Hospital, and Sydney went with her friend and helped her take round the presents to the patients, and made the acquaintance of Miss Osric’s father, and enjoyed herself exceedingly.

And next day Miss Morrell entertained all the women of her working-party at the Deanery, and Sydney and the little cousin Sylvia helped to wait on them at tea and amuse them. Sydney quite made friends with a gentle-faced woman, whose smile made her think a little bit of mother’s, and sat beside her talking to her for a great part of the evening.

“Yes, this sewing-party it were Miss Morrell’s plan, miss,” said Mrs. Carter, “and many’s the times as we’ve blessed her for it. You see, miss, most of us here went out to service that early as we hadn’t time to learn more sewing than the roughest kind, and patterns and things of that kind don’t come much in the way of poor folk. Well, Miss [168] Morrell she knew that, so she went and learned herself how to make gowns and underwear and children’s clothes and such-like, and then she has a working-party once a week for to learn us. And we sits in her own morning-room, with all her pretty things about, for all the world as if we was ladies, and she has the rolls of stuff down cheaper from the big shops than we can buy it, and lets us pay as we can. And she cuts out the things for us, and learns us all about the making of ’em, talking or reading to us in between, very sweet. And by-and-by we has tea; all served very dainty, with Mr. Tomkins, the footman, handing round as polite as anything. I can tell you, miss, it makes a real rest for us to sit and work in that there pretty room, and it makes a sight of difference, too, to the way that we dress the children. Why, mine was turned out as neat and nice as anything, though I say it as shouldn’t, all through last winter, and at half the cost of dressing ’em in them shop-made things, as comes all to pieces before you know where to have ’em. Miss Morrell, she don’t hardly let nothing interfere with our sewing-party. She’s a real young lady, she is, bless her!”

“Katharine,” said Sydney that evening, [169] when the guests had departed, “I wish I were half as good as you are. Don’t you sometimes find that work-party a great bother?”

“Oh, of course it is a little inconvenient sometimes,” she said; “but the women are so nice and so grateful, and one is so glad to have something one can do for them oneself. Papa is always very good in letting me relieve special cases of trouble, but it is his money, not mine, you see. The best kind of giving is what one gives oneself, don’t you think? And most of us can give our time and trouble, even if we can give nothing else.”

Sydney took these words home with her next day, when reluctantly she had bade good-bye to Katharine, and been put by the silver-haired Dean into the charge of Miss Osric, who had come to Donisbro’ to fetch her.

“Most of us can give our time and trouble, even if we can give nothing else.”

CHAPTER XV
LITTLE THINGS

“Mrs. Sawyer says she will be proud and pleased to let us use her kitchen for nothing,” Sydney said, “but we must pay her for the fire. She doesn’t have one in the afternoons, as a rule. How much does a fire cost, Miss Osric?”

The girl was puckering her brows over a business-like account book open on the table before her. Miss Osric stood opposite, driving a great pair of squeaking scissors through a double fold of flannel.

“We should want it for about two hours, shouldn’t we?” she said, in answer to Sydney’s question. “It would probably cost about sevenpence a time, but that depends upon the sort of coal Mrs. Sawyer has, and how big a fire you mean to keep.”

“Fourteen pence—one and twopence a week,” Sydney said, noting the fact down in her [171] account book. “And then there is the tea,” she went on. “I wonder how much that will cost? And I don’t suppose the people will be able to pay much at first towards the stuff they use. They are so poor, and one wants to help them.”

“Let them pay something towards it, Sydney,” said Miss Osric; “don’t make paupers of them—that is a mistake. Say they pay half expenses.”

“Well, perhaps,” the girl said. “How many petticoats will that roll of flannel make, do you think?”

“Not very many, and flannel is so dreadfully expensive; you will have to use flannelette, I think.”

“No, it must be flannel,” said Sydney. “I asked Dr. Lorry, and he said rheumatic people should wear flannel. And you know how dreadfully rheumatic they are here.”

There was another anxious calculation of accounts, which lasted until Sydney, pulling out the lovely little gold watch which had been her cousin’s present to her on her birthday, a day or two ago, found that it was time to dress for going out with Lady Frederica.

The girl had lost no time on her return from that Christmas visit at the Deanery in [172] starting on her plans. Miss Osric proved a willing helper, and Lady Frederica, approached judiciously at a favourable moment on the subject, had raised no objection to the projected working-party. “Oh, yes, amuse yourself as you like, my dear,” she said, “as long as you don’t go about alone, or damage your complexion.”

And Sydney had joyfully availed herself of the permission to drive in to Dacreshaw and order such materials as Miss Osric thought would be most useful to the women of the village.

Sydney had no difficulty in persuading them to come, though at first they found it hard to believe that anybody from the Castle was really going to take an interest in their troubles. But Sydney’s bright face, as she brought soup or invalid fare of some kind, coaxed out of Mrs. Fewkes, the Castle cook, had grown familiar already in cottages where there was illness, and they were beginning slowly to realize that the future Lady St. Quentin held very different views from her cousin on the subject of the tenantry who would be hers some day.

“There’ll be a good time coming when that little lady’s mistress here,” they said to one [173] another, and welcomed the idea of the working-parties with enthusiasm.

All was to be as far as possible on the lines of Miss Morrell’s, and Sydney set about buying just the same materials as those used by her friend. But flannel, long-cloth, wool, and serge cost money, and she found the small remains of her quarter’s allowance quite inadequate. Her extensive Christmas purchases had reduced the amount, which had seemed at first so inexhaustible, to a very small remnant by the time she set about the shopping for this new scheme. Hence the anxious discussion with Miss Osric over ways and means.

It never struck Sydney for one moment to apply for help to her cousin. He had said he could do nothing for the cottages; clearly what was done must be done by herself alone.

How did girls in story-books make money? She cast her mind over those that she had read. The heroines of fiction seemed to have a habit of painting the picture of the year, or writing a novel that took all London by storm. Sydney felt quite certain of her inability to follow either example.

Sometimes they were adopted by wealthy old gentlemen or ladies in search of deserving [174] heirs, but Sydney thought she had had enough of changing her home! Sometimes they discovered treasure in places where even newspaper editors would never think of hiding it. “It would be a great deal easier if some of them did little things,” poor Sydney thought.

No solution of the problem had occurred to her by the date fixed for the first working-party; when a plain but plentiful tea was spread on Mrs. Sawyer’s dresser, and a somewhat meagre pile of unmade flannel petticoats adorned the table.

Sydney received her guests a little shyly, but with so much real pleasure in her face that they had no doubt of their welcome. She and Miss Osric helped them to take off their shawls and jackets, which Mrs. Sawyer, a sickly looking woman in a very clean apron, put away in the ill-drained and ill-ventilated cupboard which she called the back kitchen.

Then came the distribution of garments to be made for themselves or their children by the workers, and here poor Sydney found the demand for flannel petticoats far exceeding her supply.

The women were exceedingly polite about it, and assured her that it did not matter, but [175] the girl felt she would have given anything to have had enough for their wants.

Needlework, an accomplishment Lady Frederica had not asked for, was one that Sydney had learnt “at the doctor’s,” and Miss Osric had had plenty of experience in the cutting-out line in old days at her father’s Vicarage. So everything went smoothly: conversation was much easier than Sydney had expected it to be, and the women seemed to thoroughly enjoy their tea. All would have been quite delightful to the girl, even though the ill-ventilated kitchen was very close with so many people sitting in it, and the damp of the uneven stone floor made her feet, in their delicate Parisian boots, extremely cold, if it had not been for the haunting thought of how she should procure the money necessary for the carrying on of her scheme.

“Only the sixth of January,” she said dismally to Miss Osric, as the two hurried down the village to the second working-party. “Only the sixth of January to-day, and Quarter Day isn’t till the twenty-fifth of March. What shall I do?”

“I wish I could help you,” said Miss Osric, “but you know I must send all I can spare to them at home. It costs so much to send my [176] brother Jack to Oxford, and there are Dorothy and Hilda who ought to go to school as soon as we can manage it.”

“Oh, I know!” cried Sydney. “I wouldn’t have you help in the money way for anything; just think what an amount of the other kind of help you are giving!” And they went into Mrs. Sawyer’s cottage and discussed the money question no more.

An observation of Lady Frederica’s next day gave Sydney the idea for which she was longing. Sir Algernon, who had been in town since Sydney’s return from the Deanery, came back that morning, and announced at luncheon that the Castle clocks were all behind London time. Sydney, eager to establish the perfections of her new watch, pulled it out triumphantly to inform the company that in that case her treasure was correct, for St. Quentin had declared it only that morning to be rather fast.

Its beauty caught Lady Frederica’s eye. “Dear me, child!” she said, “is that the watch St. Quentin gave you on your birthday. What a little beauty! But how extravagant of him, when he was speaking to me quite seriously only a day or two ago about retrenching!”

“Poor old chap, is he feeling pinched?” Sir Algernon said lightly. “There are moments, Lady Frederica, when I bless the luck that gave me a title unencumbered by a property to keep going. May I see the watch, Miss Lisle?” He spoke with a new inflection in his voice which did not escape Lady Frederica. “Yes, it is a beauty and no mistake. I expect they rooked old Quin something heavy for that.”

“It was very kind of St. Quentin,” Sydney said, and Sir Algernon murmured, “Lucky beggar!” in a tone the girl found hard to understand.

The conversation turned on other topics, but Sydney did not forget it, and, after much screwing up of her courage, went into the library a day or two later, having previously watched Sir Algernon off on a ride.

“St. Quentin,” she said, feeling very much astounded by her own daring, “I’ve come to ask a favour of you; and please— please be very kind, and don’t ask any questions or be angry when you hear what I want. Do say you’ll be kind!”

“Well, that’s a nice modest request, anyhow,” her cousin said, smiling a little. “What awful things have you been doing? Oh, of [178] course, I’m not to ask. If you were a boy I should guess you to be in a scrape, but girls keep clear of those things, don’t they?”

“Don’t laugh,” said Sydney; “at least, I would rather you laughed than were angry. St. Quentin, please don’t think me horribly ungrateful, but may—can I change the watch you gave me on my birthday?”

“Oh, I do! I do!” she cried; “but, please, you said you wouldn’t ask questions, and I want to change it!”

“Who will do the job for you?” her cousin said. “I ordered the watch from Oliver’s in Donisbro’, if you wish to know; but mind, I won’t have you poking about changing things yourself.”

“Miss Osric said she knew her father would change it for me, if you gave permission,” said Sydney. “St. Quentin, I can see you are vexed.”

“No, I’m not,” he said, a little bit impatiently, “but I should like to get at the bottom of this, Sydney. Can’t you tell me straight out what’s wrong?”

“No, I couldn’t,” she assured him, “and [179] nothing is wrong really, on my honour! Miss Osric knows all about it, and she is ever so wise and experienced!”

“A Methuselah of twenty-three years, isn’t she?” St. Quentin said, smiling despite his vexation. “Well, Sydney, I suppose I must let you go your own way. Put the matter into the hands of your mentor’s father, and have nothing personally to do with it, that’s all.”

If it cost Sydney a pang to part with her treasured watch, and it did undoubtedly, she was more than repaid by the look upon the women’s faces as they saw the noble pile of flannel garments laid out for their benefit. Mr. Osric had done his part well, and obtained for Sydney very nearly the full value of the watch, after some argument with Mr. Oliver, who declared that he “never took back an article when sold.”

He was, however, speedily rewarded for yielding by a gentleman with light blue eyes and a monocle, who had been turning over scarf pins at the other end of the shop during Mr. Osric’s transaction.

This gentleman came closer to Oliver, when Mr. Osric had gone out, and requested to be allowed to examine the little watch the clergyman [180] had left behind him. After a brief but careful examination he asked the price, and bought it, leaving Mr. Oliver, who knew Sir Algernon Bridge well enough by sight, to shrewdly surmise that a “single gentleman who bought a lady’s watch must shortly be intending to be married.”

CHAPTER XVI
A PROPOSAL

A sleety rain was falling, but, despite the cold, St. Quentin’s couch was drawn up close beneath the mullioned windows of the library, from which he could look out upon the green expanse of Park and the mighty trees, which had seen generations of his family reign their reign at the great old Castle, and die.

The present owner’s face was sad enough, as he gazed out on the splendid prospect, beautiful even in the bareness of winter and the dreariness of rain.

At his elbow lay an invalid writing-desk and a sheet of paper, on which the words were written: “Dear Fane—Cut the timber from....” He had gone no further, though he had started that letter to his agent when Sir Algernon had left him an hour ago.

A sentence kept rising up before him whenever he took up his pen to write, a sentence [182] which, though spoken more than five years ago, was fresh as though he heard it yesterday.

Yes, he remembered that his father had paid his, St. Quentin’s, debts by care and economy, but without sacrificing any of the splendid trees, which were the pride of the county. “ We’ve never let the timber go, my boy. ” He turned his head with an impatient sigh and flung the paper down again, staring from the rain-washed window gloomily.

As he looked aimlessly enough, something crossed his line of vision that made him start into a sudden interest and life.

Two ladies, wrapped in waterproofs and wrestling with refractory umbrellas, passed beneath his window, carrying a large basket. In spite of sleet and rain they walked fast as though in a hurry, and quickly disappeared amid the trees, though not before Sydney’s cousin had recognised the scarlet tam-o’-shanter and long tail of refractory brown hair, blown every way.

“What on earth can the child be thinking of to go out on such an afternoon!” St. Quentin said to himself, and he rang sharply for Dickson.

The servant vanished, but returned in a few minutes with the information—“Miss Lisle and Miss Osric have gone down to the village, my lord. Miss Lisle holds a sewing meeting for the village women on two afternoons a week, my lord.”

St. Quentin considered this information, then enquired, “Is Lady Frederica in?”

Dickson withdrew, and shortly afterwards Lady Frederica tripped in, looking as though she considered somebody very much to blame for the dreariness of the afternoon.

“Aunt Rica,” said her nephew, “did you know of this preposterous idea of Sydney’s—teaching old women to sew or something, on a beastly afternoon like this?”

“Oh, yes, she asked my leave to do something of the kind,” Lady Frederica answered, with a yawn. “She said something, I remember, about the people being poor and miserable here, and wanting to help them, and you having told her you could do nothing. All she wanted was to do something or another for the women—I forget what—but I know it did not [184] seem to me likely to damage her figure or complexion. Oh, I see, you don’t like it, but girls will amuse themselves, St. Quentin, and slumming is quite the last thing, you know!”

A remembrance of the girl’s earnest face as they talked on Christmas Day came over her cousin. How keen the child had been over the rebuilding of those cottages, which were a disgrace to him, he knew, and not the only blot by a long way on the great St. Quentin estates. So that was why she wished to change her watch. Why on earth couldn’t he have seen, and given her the money, instead of leaving her to sacrifice her own little treasures for the benefit of his tenants! Having failed to persuade him to do his duty by them, she was trying, with the little means she had, to do it for him. He crushed that unfinished letter to his agent impatiently between his fingers. The order he had been about to give him became if possible more distasteful than it had been before. How could he cut off all chance of doing something for his wretched tenants! And yet—and yet—what else was left for him to do but write?

“Well, St. Quentin, if you don’t want me any more I’ll go back to my novel,” Lady Frederica said with another yawn. “You’re [185] most depressing company, my dear boy; almost as depressing as the weather!”

“Thanks awfully for coming,” he said absently. She turned to leave him; as she did so her eye fell upon the crumpled paper on the floor.

“St. Quentin,” she cried sharply, “you’re not telling Mr. Fane to cut down timber, are you? Gracious, what would your poor dear father have said!”

“What I feel,” he said bitterly, “that it’s a very good thing my reign is near its end.... Don’t stay if you’d rather not, Aunt Rica.”

She was by no means unwilling to leave him for the more cheerful company of a novel in her own private sitting-room, where the fire was bright and the chairs very comfortable. Left once more to himself, he snatched up a pen, took a fresh sheet of paper, and began again, “Dear Fane”; then paused.

Sydney’s words on Christmas Day kept rising up before him, instead of those which he meant to write.

His letter had progressed no further when [186] Dickson came in an hour later, as the short winter’s afternoon drew towards its close. With an exclamation at the cold, the man wheeled his master’s couch to the fire, which he stirred noiselessly into a blaze, brought him some tea, and lit his reading-lamp.

“Miss Lisle has not yet returned, my lord,” he informed St. Quentin after a voyage in search of her.

“Yes, my lord.” Dickson closed the door softly, and St. Quentin was left alone. He made no attempt to go on with his letter, but stared idly in the fire, listening intently. In about ten minutes the door opened and Sir Algernon strolled in.

“You!” said St. Quentin, in a tone which was not expressive of the keenest pleasure.

“Yes, I, old man. I want to talk to you. By the way, have you sent that note to Fane about the timber?”

“No; the truth is, Bridge, I’m getting rather sick of this blackmailing business.”

“You are?” Sir Algernon surveyed the weary, impatient face in silence for a minute. “I wonder if you’d like to try another tack,” he suggested softly. “I’ve had a good deal of cash out of you one way and another, and now you’re—er—er——”

“Well, going to send in your checks some time pretty soon, I suppose?” Sir Algernon amended. “Look here, I know the estate’s heavily encumbered and all that, but I’m not a mercenary man, and the girl’s pretty——”

“Aren’t we? You’re a bit out, old chap. What I have to say does concern her, as it happens. What do you say to this, Quin? I’ll give my word not to squeeze you further, and, what’s more, I’ll burn a certain letter that we know of here—before your eyes—if you’ll swear to make a match between that little girl and me. You won’t have opposition to contend with, I imagine. She’s too much of a child to have any violent fancies elsewhere, especially since you and Lady Frederica between you choked off the chemist’s [188] assistant. I’d have made running with a bit myself this last fortnight, only she’s always about in cottages and accompanied by the governess. The combination is a little too much for me to swallow, specially when the cottages are yours , my dear chap. So I’ll leave you to do the courting for me, since she evidently looks on you in loco parentis . Eh, if she knew a little more about you she wouldn’t be so keen to pin her faith upon you, would she?”

“No—I think that’s about all. You won’t be altogether sorry to save your timber, eh, Quin?”

He pulled out two or three envelopes from a pocket-book. “That’s it,” he said, “inside that thumbed grey envelope; the other is the letter that you wrote me before settling to pay up—talking a lot of high faluting about expecting me to believe your innocence for the sake of auld lang syne, etc., as if I should be such a fool!”

“Destroy that letter, anyhow,” St. Quentin [189] said, his thin hands clenching. “It’s a bit of a mockery to keep it now. I still believed in you more or less when I wrote it, you see.”

Sir Algernon laughed easily. “You were always a bit of a fool, Quin, from Eton days onwards. As you say, I may as well get rid of this precious production of yours. There’s not much sentiment left nowadays about our intercourse with one another, is there? and I’ve nearly muddled it with the jockey’s before now. Here goes!—Stop, let me just make sure I’ve got the right one; yes, that’s it, the cream-coloured envelope with ‘Re Quin’ on the back. Aren’t I a model man of business, eh? There goes your letter to me into the flames, old chap, and yours to Duncombe back into my pocket-book until you choose to have it follow suit!”

“I reject most absolutely your proposal, thank you. I’ve been a fool and worse, but I’m not quite the cad that comes to. I’d sooner see her marry that young Chichester!”

Sir Algernon’s face wore no very amiable expression. “Is that your final answer?” he said.

“No, and what’s more, I don’t intend to have you in the Castle any longer. You’re not fit to associate with a girl like that. The Chichesters have brought her up the right way, anyhow, and I don’t intend to have you with her any longer. You must go—and—how much do you ask for destroying Duncombe’s letter, for good and all? I won’t have the child blackmailed when I’m gone. You must destroy the letter in my sight this time. How much payment do you want to do what any decent chap would have done long ago?”

An ugly look was on the handsome face before him. “You’ll have to pay this time, my boy,” Sir Algernon said slowly; “well, rather heavily.”

Sir Algernon, without moving from his lounging posture in the arm-chair, named a sum which made St. Quentin start with indignation.

“Well, don’t, then! I daresay Miss Lisle will be a little less stingy, when she comes of [191] age, and I enquire if she would like the letter published.”

“Don’t be such a fool, old chap,” his companion said, rising and coming close to him. “I don’t really want to be hard upon you. Give me your word you’ll manage the match, and I’ll destroy the letter on the spot, and, what’s more, turn over a new leaf as well. You needn’t be afraid she won’t be happy—I’ll reform when I marry that little girl.”

“Have done with Sydney, please. I’d sooner see her dead than married to you!”

Without answering Sir Algernon, St. Quentin seized pen and paper, and began again—

The knock at the door was unheard by both, and neither noticed Sydney’s entrance.

She had changed her wet clothes, but her hair hung straight and damp about her face. The face itself was bright with exercise, and [192] looked a strange contrast to the faces of the two men in the lamp-lit library.

“Yes, dear, but it doesn’t matter now,” he said. “Go back to Miss Osric.”

She looked at him. “You are very tired, St. Quentin! Let me write that letter for you.”

She laid her hand upon the desk. “You ought not to be bothered with letters when you are so tired, and,” with a reproachful glance at Sir Algernon, “I am sure that you ought not to talk business any longer.”

“It’s not the talking which has tired him, Miss Lisle,” said Sir Algernon; “it’s the thought of something rather disagreeable he must do, unless you care to save him from it!”

“Hold your tongue, Bridge!” said St. Quentin, but Sydney had already made a quick step towards Sir Algernon.

“Will you tell me, please, what I can do to save my cousin’s trouble?” she said simply. “I would do anything I could for him.”

“Sydney!” cried St. Quentin hoarsely, but Sir Algernon had sprung forward and caught [195] the girl’s hands in his. “Sydney! would you? Shall I tell you?”

Her cousin’s voice behind her made her start; it was so full of concentrated fury. “Let her go, you scoundrel! Sydney, leave the room, dear; that man isn’t fit to speak to you!”

She pulled her hands away, and stood between the two, trembling from head to foot. Sir Algernon lost in his anger the last vestige of his self-control.

“If I’m unfit to speak to her, what are you, St. Quentin?” he snarled. “A cheat—a liar—a trickster—a——”

“How dare you!” Sydney cried, flinging herself on her knees beside her cousin’s couch as though to protect him. “Leave the room, please!”

“You wouldn’t cling about him if you knew what I know. What everybody else shall shortly know!” Sir Algernon said between his teeth. “He is——”

Sydney had left childhood behind her as she faced him with clear, scornful eyes that met his fearlessly.

“You need not trouble to say any more,” she said, “for I do not believe one word that you say against my Cousin St. Quentin!”

In the stillness that followed a footman knocked and came in with a something on a salver. “A telegram for Sir Algernon, my lord,” he said.

Sir Algernon tore it open and read it, changing colour as he did so, then crumpled it and tossed it into the very heart of the blazing fire. “I have to write an answer for the post,” he said. “Au revoir, Quin; we’ll finish our talk when reluctantly deprived of Miss Lisle’s society. Miss Lisle, if you still doubt what I said about St. Quentin, ask him what I meant. He knows.”

CHAPTER XVII
ST. QUENTIN’S STORY

St. Quentin looked at Sydney’s earnest face in silence for a moment, then spoke abruptly:

“Sit down. I’ve a good mind to tell you a story which will make you understand—well, a good many things—among others what a contemptible cad I really am. It isn’t a particularly pretty story, but you may as well know all about it.”

“I don’t believe one word Sir Algernon said about you,” she answered, flushing. “Don’t tell me anything, St. Quentin. I don’t want to hear!”

“A part of what he said was true, none the less,” he answered steadily. “Listen. You know Bridge is five or six years my senior, and he patronised me when I was a little chap in turn-down collars at Eton. Of course he left years before I did; but when I went into the Guards he was a captain in my regiment, [198] and the old intimacy grew up again. I was a young fool and flattered by the friendship, as I thought it, of a man who had seen the world. Well, luckily you’ve had no chance of knowing what fools youngsters in the Guards can make of themselves!

“My father paid my debts again and again, until he grew sick of it, and said I must resign my commission: he couldn’t stand any more.

“I was sobered by that, for my father and mother were awfully cut up about it, and I knew they had treated me far better than ever I deserved. I did try to pull up then, and pretty soon—no, don’t stir the fire, I like the dark—I got to know a girl ... it doesn’t matter who, except that she was a great deal too good for me.... She was interested in the cottages, like you are, Sydney. You remind me of her now and then, and she was just eighteen when first I knew her, nine years ago.

“Well, my extravagance had crippled my father, and he couldn’t do half he wanted for his cottages. She minded that a good deal, I remember. I felt quite certain that if she would only be engaged to me, I should find it impossible to be reckless or extravagant [199] again; but her father wouldn’t hear of an engagement then, and even she said I must give proof of being trustworthy.

“It was at this time, when I was half maddened by the constant restrictions laid upon our intercourse, that I chanced on Bridge again. We had never quite dropped each other; and when he left the Guards and went into a regiment of Dragoons which was quartered at Donisbro’ he came and looked me up at St. Quentin. We saw a lot of each other, and I introduced him at the——to the girl’s father, and he went to the house a good deal. She never liked him much, though, I fancy.... I was sick to death of home and a quiet life and trying to take an interest in the estate and tenants, as my father wished, and was ready enough to join in the diversions of the officers. There wasn’t much harm in that—they were mostly a good set, but it was a rich regiment, and I found the money going faster than I liked.

“I had always been noted in the Guards for my horses—so was Bridge. I know we got talking horses one day, and bets passed about the respective mettle of my favourite, Bridge’s, and another chap’s—young Gibbs, who also fancied himself as a judge of horse-flesh. [200] Somehow a race was arranged, and we got our jockeys and each put a horse in training.

“I was mad, I think, for I took enormous bets on my MacIvor beating the other two hollow. I somehow felt that I must win, and then you see I could have recouped myself for my losses at cards, and started fair again; at least I thought I could—that sort of fair start isn’t worth much, really. The only kind of fair start that is any good is to set your face against temptation: that’s the kind she wanted.

“My people were at Nice just then. My mother had been ill. If they had been at home I could hardly have gone so far. But I was pretty desperate, and everybody knew it. That made things look all the blacker for me later on.... Two days before the race I got thrown, and broke my right arm. I was cut about the head too, and Lorry kept me in bed, though I was wild to be up and doing. Then, as I couldn’t go to the race, I did the idiotic act which ruined me, though I didn’t really get much worse than I deserved. I wrote to my jockey Duncombe, urging him to win the race at all costs, and promising him a heavy sum extra to his pay if he did.

“I remember one of the expressions that I [201] used was ‘pull the show through somehow—anyhow!’

“It was a feverish, excited kind of scrawl, and, after I’d sent it, I got worse and didn’t know much about anything for the next week. Then Bridge came to see me, and what do you think he said?

“The bets had been far heaviest on us two, Gibbs wasn’t in it ... but it was he who pulled the race off, after all. Bridge’s horse had been hurt, and fell at the first fence; and then my jockey seemed to lose his head altogether, all the lookers-on said. Do you know why? No, you wouldn’t; but they did. Bridge was ready to kill his man, Grey, for not watching the horse carefully enough, and he split on my jockey Duncombe, whom he had seen lurking round the stable the night before the race. Duncombe, to save himself, told Bridge he had injured Bridge’s horse by my orders, and showed up the letter I had written him, as proof. Everything was against me, from the expressions I had used in it to the fact that it was written in what looked like a disguised hand and was unsigned. (Lorry came as I was finishing it, and I knew he would stop my writing, and threw it into an envelope without waiting to put any more.)

“Bridge didn’t make the letter public. He just bought it off the jockey and came to me. He absolutely refused to believe what I told him of my innocence, but offered to suppress the letter if I would pay him an appalling sum in hush-money. I told him to go to Jericho at first, but when I got up again, I realised how fishy it all looked for me, and how, if that letter were published, it would be taken as absolute proof of my guilt. I felt—I told you that I was and am a coward—that it would break my father’s heart, and I couldn’t bear— her —to think that I had done the thing. I went to the Jews, raised the sum upon a post-obit, and paid Bridge his hush-money. He told his brother-officers he was satisfied I had no hand in the laming of the horse, but he didn’t destroy the letter. He has it now, and at intervals blackmails me with a threat of publication if I won’t pay him for his silence. I have done so hitherto.

“That’s about all, Sydney. You see now why Bridge is here, and why I can’t do my duty by my tenants. That motor-smash was about the best thing that could happen to me, I suppose, and if I weren’t so abominably strong, I should have left a better Lisle than I am in possession some time ago.... If it [203] weren’t for the old name that has been handed down pretty clean from father to son all along the line, I’d have let Bridge publish the letter long ago,” he added bitterly. “ She wrote to me just after I had been fool enough to pay Bridge his hush-money. She must have heard the rumours against me and believed in them. She wrote, giving no reason, but saying all must be over between us. That was all—I think it was enough!”

A light dawned on Sydney, as she thought about another story she had heard not so very long ago. She knelt down beside him, and laid her hands on his.

“I know I’m not much good,” she said, “but, Cousin St. Quentin, I do care for you, in spite of this. Why didn’t you go and tell the girl all about it—just everything, as you have told me? Mother says if you love people really you must go on loving even if they do wrong, because the real love that is put into us is a bit of God. That girl would have gone on loving you—I know she would.”

“I wish to goodness I had let Bridge do his worst!” said St. Quentin. “I wish I’d had the pluck to do the right thing then, instead of wasting the money that was given me to use, not chuck away. Now you know why [204] I’m telling Fane to ruin the estate my ancestors took pride in by cutting down the timber at the bidding of that man! Because I was too great a coward to do the right thing first—when I could.”

“Please forgive me if I am very impertinent, St. Quentin,” she said earnestly. “You say you wish that you had done the right thing then.” She hesitated for an instant, and then spoke the last words firmly: “You wish that you had done it then—why don’t you do it now?”

CHAPTER XVIII
THE CHAIN BROKEN

For a full minute there was silence in the big room. Then St. Quentin looked up.

“It’s rather late in the day,” he said, “but possibly better late than never. Sydney, will you write a letter for me?”

She thought of another letter she had written for him more than two months ago, but there was a considerable difference in the subject matter of that letter and to-day’s.

“ Dear Fane ,”—he dictated—“we must have five hundred pounds’ worth of timber down as soon as possible, as I want fresh cottages to replace those in Water Lane and Foxholes. Have workmen over immediately. This rebuilding is by the wish of my heir, Miss Lisle.”

She brought it, and, as she gave him his pen, she did what she had never done before, she stooped and kissed his forehead.

“I didn’t like to tell you before,” she cried, “because you said you could do nothing for the cottages, but Mrs. Sawyer is ill, and when I went to see her this afternoon she said she never would be better while she lived in that cottage. Will she have one of the new ones, St. Quentin?”

“Yes, and I’ll mark hers for pulling down. We’ll do this business thoroughly while we’re about it, beginning with Lislehurst, but going on to the rest.”

He wrote his signature large and clearly. As he did so, Sir Algernon came back into the room. He glanced at the letter.

“So you’ve done it. I say, my dear fellow, philanthropy is all very well, but you can’t afford it at present.”

“Since when did I give you leave to read my private letters?” asked St. Quentin drily. As he spoke he placed the letter in an envelope, directed it, and put it into Sydney’s hand.

Sir Algernon stood between the girl and the door. “You’re mad, Quin! You’ll have enough to do to raise my screw, without attempting any more.”

“Let Miss Lisle pass,” said St. Quentin [207] quietly. “On the proverbial second thoughts, which we all know to be not only better, but best, I have changed my mind. Publish Duncombe’s letter if you choose! I’ll not pay a farthing more to stop you, nor will Miss Lisle when she comes of age. That’s all. Sydney,”—the girl was at the door—“tell somebody to let Bridge’s man know that he finds he has to catch the 8.15 to town to-night.”

The girl went out, the precious note in her hand and a tumult of joy in her heart.

That horrible Sir Algernon was leaving, and St. Quentin, of his own freewill, was going to rebuild his neglected cottages. She felt she could have danced, despite the dignity of her eighteen years.

In the entrance hall she met the old doctor, struggling out of his wet mackintosh and goloshes. “ What a night!” he exclaimed. “But this disgusting weather seems to suit you, my dear Miss Lisle. You are looking blooming, if you will allow an old man to say so. How is your cousin, eh? Moped a bit this dreary day, no doubt? Meant to look in upon him earlier to see if he fancied a chat, but I was kept in the village. And that reminds me, my dear young lady, I shouldn’t [208] go to Loam for a day or two, if I were you; they’ve got something about there that I don’t quite like the look of. I’ve been warning the Vicar; that boy of his follows him about like a dog to all the cottages. Not that this kind of low fever is infectious, but you may take my word for it that where there’s fever there’s a reason for it. So don’t you go to Loam till I give you leave. Not that I’m anxious, you know, not at all.”

Sydney thought the old doctor was rather more anxious than he cared to own. His face was considerably graver than usual as he walked across the hall to the door of the library.

As he reached it, Sydney, who had followed him, caught his hand with a cry of terror. “Oh, go in quickly!” she cried.

Sir Algernon had been almost stunned by astonishment for the first few minutes after Sydney had left the room with the letter which practically spelt defeat to him. There was a changed, drawn look about his face, when at length he recovered himself sufficiently to speak.

“You won’t be able to take that high line much longer, my good fellow!” he snarled, fumbling in his pocket-book. “I’ll just refresh your memory on the subject of the expressions used by you in that precious letter before it—goes to press!”

Sir Algernon drew out the dirty envelope on which “Re Duncombe” was scrawled in his own hand, and pulled from it a letter in the cramped left-hand writing.

“Here we are. Some of these expressions will look rather fine in print, I fancy; the Society papers will have a treat. Why——”

A violent exclamation burst from him, as he stared wildly, first at the letter in his hand, then at the envelope, and back at the letter again.

Sir Algernon came quickly towards him. “You made me do it!” he hissed. “You made me burn your note to Duncombe. Your letter to me and to Duncombe were in each [210] other’s envelopes, and you made me burn the wrong one!” His voice, loud, harsh, and grating in his fury, rang out into the hall, despite the heavy curtain over the door of the library. “You made me do it, and I’ll——”

“Don’t touch me,” said St. Quentin, vaguely aware as he spoke that all might well be over before Dickson had the time to answer his ring. “It wouldn’t take a great deal to finish me, you see, and Lorry would require an explanation.”

“He does!” the old doctor cried, hurrying into the room with Sydney at his heels. “May I ask what you’re doing, Sir Algernon? Get a little farther off from my patient, if you please.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said St. Quentin, “Bridge and I were only discussing my new scheme for rebuilding the cottages. But, interesting as I find his views, I am afraid we shall have to close the discussion, as he has a train to catch. Good-bye, Bridge.”

“You think you’ve won the game and can keep your secret in your hands. You can’t! Miss Morrell read the letter. I showed it to her, and she read it and asked what it meant. [211] I told her and she believed in me—not you! not you!”

“She did not !” said Sydney, “for she told me all about it. She believed in it just at first, because she did not know how wicked you could be, Sir Algernon. But by-and-by, when she grew older, she knew that St. Quentin could not possibly have done what you accused him of. She didn’t understand about the letter to the jockey; but she just knew that St. Quentin could not possibly be mean or dishonourable. And she knows you are both!”

“Hear, hear!” said Dr. Lorry, in a very audible aside, and Sir Algernon, muttering some indistinguishable remark about his train, went out.

“Lord St. Quentin, your heir is a trump!” the old doctor said enthusiastically, and St. Quentin, as he bade good-night to Sydney, agreed.

CHAPTER XIX
PAULY’S BIRTHDAY

A small army of workmen had appeared at Lislehurst, and the village folk were beginning to realise the incredible fact that their marquess did at length intend to do his duty by them, when Pauly’s fifth birthday came round.

“May I have him to tea with me?” Sydney asked, and on receiving permission began to make extensive preparations in the way of good cheer.

Mrs. Fewkes was easily induced to devote her energies to the making of a truly stupendous cake, conical in shape and covered with white sugar, adorned with amazing flowers and fruits of all colours. And there were birds, butterflies, and beetles made of chocolate upon it, and five pink candles fixed around its topmost peak, to signify the five years which the small birthday king would have reached.

Not content with this marvel of confectionery, Mrs. Fewkes further added dishes of cream, buns, and other delicacies for which she was deservedly famous, so altogether Pauly’s birthday tea bid fair to be a very great success.

It was spread in the school-room, and on his plate was seated a large furry toy dog, with red tongue hanging out in a dégagé manner, and a spring which, when pressed, caused him to jump uncertainly about, and also bark in a thin and spasmodic way. This was Sydney’s present to the hero of the day. Miss Osric had contributed a box of bricks, which stood upon his chair.

All was in readiness at four o’clock, when Pauly arrived in charge of his nurse, looking rather extra fat and red about the cheeks, Sydney thought.

He was immensely excited over something and would not wait, as she suggested, to take off his little overcoat upstairs, but insisted on removing it the very moment he had set two rather muddy little feet inside the hall.

The reason of his eagerness was soon apparent. The blouse and bunchy petticoats were raiment of the past; Pauly was attired in all the glories of his first sailor suit!

Sydney knelt down beside the small sturdy [214] figure and kissed the round important little face. “Why, Pauly, you are splendid! and what a great big boy you look to-day!”

“Ever so much bigger than you looked when first I saw you,” Sydney answered, evading the question with dexterity. “Isn’t he a man to-day, Miss Osric?”

Miss Osric admired duly, and then suggested an adjournment to the school-room. But Pauly stood like a rock, his legs planted wide apart and his hands in his pockets.

Sydney and Miss Osric exchanged puzzled glances. What was to be done? Of course he was naughty, but neither liked to scold him on a birthday.

“There is such a lovely cake upstairs,” she said, “a cake as high as that.” She held her hand some distance from the floor. “It has [215] sugar all over it and such lovely fruits and sweets, white and pink, and all kinds of nice things upon it. Don’t you want to see it, Pauly?”

“Lord St. Quentin, I suppose he means,” Miss Osric said aside to Sydney. “But I don’t think he would like to see the child, do you?”

Sydney was rather doubtful. “There is something so wonderful upstairs in your plate, Pauly,” she assured him insidiously; “something that has such a nice funny voice, and jumps about too, doesn’t it, Miss Osric?”

Pauly put one irresolute foot forward in the direction of the bear-guarded staircase, and then drew it back again.

“Want to show my twousers to the ill one,” he said, in the same loud sing-song voice as he had used before.

It is sad to relate that two grown-up girls were worsted by this scrap of manhood wearing to-day manly garb for the first time. Sydney rose from her knees and went toward the library. “I will ask St. Quentin,” she said, feeling rather small.

“Oh, bring him to me, by all means!” he said. “Upon my word! that boy ought to make a Prime Minister. He has enough force of character for anything. Tell him the ‘ill one’ will be charmed to see the trousers!”

Sydney led the boy in, whispering to him not to make a noise, for Lord St. Quentin was very tired.

St. Quentin surveyed his small visitor with fixed and flattering attention. “Hullo!” he said, “what’s this huge chap coming in? The Vicar himself, I suppose? Oh, his son, is it, Sydney? Well, how are you, eh, Paul? Is that your name? Going to shake hands with me—that’s right. I suppose you’re seven at least, aren’t you?”

“Dear me! and I’m thirty-five and not half so proud of it. And these are the new trousers. Upon my word! they’re remarkably fine specimens, aren’t they, Sydney? You want a pinch for your new clothes, don’t you, [217] youngster? or would you rather have a sixpence to put into each of those trouser pockets? What, you would rather have the sixpences? That’s odd, isn’t it? There, put them in your pockets, and now you may run away; only don’t eat quite all the cake Miss Lisle has provided for you, or you won’t be able to walk home! He looks as if he eats too much already,” he concluded aside to Sydney. “What a colour the child has!”

“He is a good deal redder than usual, and fatter-looking too,” Sydney said. “I have never seen him look quite like this before.”

St. Quentin’s caution was not needed. For once Pauly did not seem hungry, even for cake. He was delighted with his dog and kept it on his knee all through tea-time, but though he set up a little shout of joy at the sight of the splendid cake, he only played with the noble slice that Sydney cut for him, and couldn’t be persuaded to be hungry even when “Carlo” was made to bark for crumbs!

They gave up coaxing him to eat after that, and all three sat upon the hearth-rug, building, with Miss Osric’s bricks, a most wonderful kennel for Carlo.

For a little while Pauly seemed happy, and laughed merrily enough, then suddenly, without apparent reason, he began to cry.

Sydney, who had never seen the manly little fellow shed tears yet for any reason whatsoever, was alarmed.

She gathered him into her arms and tried to find out what was wrong. “What is it, Pauly, darling? Aren’t you well?”

Sydney had risen to ring and order the pony-carriage, thinking that she and Miss Osric had better take their little visitor back at once to the daddy he was crying for, when one of the footmen came up to the school-room to announce “Mr. Seaton is come for Master Paul.”

Sydney ran downstairs to ask if Mr. Seaton were walking, and to offer the pony-carriage. The Vicar was looking very tired and grave, and seemed in a hurry to be off. He said he had been visiting in the village all the afternoon: there was a great deal of illness about. “I think you must discontinue your working-party [219] for a week or two, Miss Lisle,” he said. “Dr. Lorry thinks Mrs. Sawyer is suffering from some kind of low fever; the same thing which seems prevalent in Loam. Don’t go into her cottage for a day or two, at all events, till we see how things are. I am keeping Pauly from the village now.”

Declining the offer of the pony-carriage, he took his small son, quiet now that he had got his daddy, and still clasping Carlo, in his arms, and the two went out together.

CHAPTER XX
HUGH TO THE RESCUE

“Fever epidemic in Blankshire. Medical help urgently required. The villages specially affected by the fever, are Loam, Hurstleigh, Marston, Styles, and Lislehurst—all on the estate of the Marquess of St. Quentin.

“The epidemic is of a very serious nature. The Chief Sanitary Inspector of Donisbro’ visited the affected villages upon the outbreak of the illness, and declares the cottages to be in a greatly neglected condition.

“The local physician has applied for help to the staff of the London Hospitals.”

Hugh Chichester read these words in the hall of the Blue-friars Hospital, as he and another young doctor waited for a “case,” which was being brought in from the street.

“Estate of the Marquess of St. Quentin,” [221] his companion commented. “Isn’t that the chap who had that frightful motor-smash three months ago? Why, hullo! Chichester, old man! Are you off your head?”

For Hugh had flung himself into the lift without a word, and was swooping upward to the first floor, where he knew that he would find his father.

The doctor was free for the moment, but Hugh knew that he himself was not. He only paused to thrust the paper in his father’s hand, with a hoarse “Read that,” and was down the staircase and in the hall again, before the “case,” upon its stretcher, had crossed the wide open paved courtyard of the Blue-friars Hospital.

“You want to go to Blankshire, my boy?” he said, when he and his son met for their hastily-snatched luncheon.

“I think it may be possible,” the doctor said. “Help is certainly needed, to judge from the papers, and I would not hold you back. But, my boy, you must remember it may mean the loss of your post here, unless the Hospital elects to send you to Blankshire.”

“And, Hugh,” his father went on, “you must give me your word that you keep away from Sydney. It won’t be easy, but I know that I can trust you to think of her and not yourself. You want to spare her from suffering what you suffer. You will prove yourself her true ‘servant’ in this, as ‘Dorothy Osborne’ would say to us. If you can trust yourself to keep clear of intercourse with her, I think that you are right to volunteer your services. I should have done so myself years ago.”

“Yes, I’ll keep away from her,” Hugh muttered, and the doctor said, “All right, my boy, I trust you. We will see what your mother says to sending you to Blankshire.”

And Mrs. Chichester said “Yes.” Perhaps those little snatches of fireside talk, for which big bearded sons on the other side of the world grow homesick, had made her understand her boy with that absolute understanding sympathy which only mothers have the power to give.

“Yes, you must go, my Hugh,” she said, “for you will be able to help those poor people, and I know that you will be my unselfish son, as you have always been, and make it easy for Sydney.”

“I will, mother,” Hugh said, and so packed his things and offered his services to Dr. Lorry.

The old doctor met him at Dacreshaw Station; he was looking older and his cheery utterances came out with an effort.

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Chichester, extremely glad; for I can’t deny that this fever is a very serious one, and the condition of the cottages is so much against the poor people’s chances of recovery. Still, I have no doubt, no, none at all, that, with your able assistance, we shall soon see a marked improvement.”

“They haven’t got it at the Castle, have they?” Hugh asked anxiously as he climbed up into the high dog-cart by the old doctor’s side, and was driven rapidly along the muddy country roads towards Lislehurst.

“No! no!” Dr. Lorry said, “and I see no real reason why they should. Lady Frederica is extremely anxious to carry off Miss Lisle to town, but I have endeavoured to dissuade her. Miss Lisle has been so much about among the cottages of late, that I am anxious—not about her, oh dear no! but anxious, I repeat, to have her under my own eye for a day or two longer. And it is not as though she ran any risk in remaining, [224] as I have assured Lord St. Quentin. These low fevers cannot well be called infectious.” He relapsed into silence,—an unusual state with him—which lasted till they reached Lislehurst, and his own gate. They got down and a man took the cob’s head. “Now we are at my house, my dear—er, Chichester,” he said, rousing himself, “and perhaps, when you have lunched, you would not mind coming round with me to see the little boy at the Vicarage, who is, I fear, in a rather critical condition.” Hugh started. “Little Paul ill! I will come at once, if you don’t mind, sir.”

“You will come at once? Well, if you are not fatigued, I own it would be a relief. His condition is decidedly critical, and your science is a good deal fresher than mine. Not that I take at all a hopeless view of his case, far from it!” the old doctor said, blowing his nose rather fiercely; “but he’s his father’s only child, sir, and—motherless.”

Hugh was already hurrying out into the village by the old doctor’s side. “Little Pauly ill!—that jolly little chap!” he kept on saying, and he walked so fast that the old man could hardly keep pace with him.

There was a strange silence in the village. Hardly any children were playing in the [225] road. “We had to shut the schools,” said Dr. Lorry.

The village seemed almost as though it held its breath and waited for some stroke to fall.

Hugh looked up at the tall, grey tower of Lislehurst Church as they passed beneath it, and thought of little Pauly as he had been on that bright December morning, full of life and mischief. It seemed incredible to imagine illness or death coming near him.

“The Vicar told me of that morning on the tower,” he said. “You saved the boy once, Chichester; please God, you’ll save him again.”

The Vicarage nursery was a good deal changed from the cheerful room where Sydney had sat on her first morning in Blankshire. The toys, no longer wanted, were pushed aside and put away in cupboards; their absence giving a curiously forlorn appearance to the room.

Sickroom appliances had taken their place, and the little iron cot, from which Pauly’s restless fingers used to scrape the paint on summer mornings when getting-up time [226] seemed long in coming, was pulled into the centre of the room.

Pauly’s thick red curls had been cropped close to his head for coolness, and the sturdy, roundabout figure was shrunk to a mere shadow of its former self. It was hard to believe him the same child who had displayed the glory of his first knickerbockers with such pride at the Castle only a short week ago!

Beside the little cot the Vicar stood, very quiet, as he had been all through the illness, but with eyes that asked more questions than his lips.

But he held out his hand to Hugh with a look which showed that he had not forgotten that morning on the church tower in the midst of all this trouble.

“Mr. Chichester indeed! I could hardly believe Dr. Lorry’s new colleague to be you. This is luck. I am very glad.”

His eyes were searching Hugh’s face as he spoke, as if to read there what he thought of little Pauly.

“These young men have all the science nowadays,” old Dr. Lorry said, in a very audible aside. “We’ll see him work wonders with the boy, please God!”

Pauly was lying in a sort of restless doze, [227] and they would not wake him. One arm clasped Carlo’s black form to his heart.

“He wakes and cries for that beast if he finds it gone,” the Vicar whispered, with a sad little smile. “Tell Miss Lisle when you see her, Lorry.”

The eyes of the elder men watched Hugh with a pathetic eagerness as he bent above the little cot, feeling the wasted wrist, and listening to the uncertain breathing.

“These young men ... more scientific treatment,” the old doctor said again and again, in a husky whisper. But all Hugh said was, “I should like to consult with Dr. Lorry over a new treatment.”

Further directions having been given to the nurse, who seemed a capable kind of person, the doctors took their departure, and Mr. Seaton accompanied them out.

“Yes,” Mr. Seaton said. “I must do some visiting. Mine is not the only house in trouble to-day.”

And with a last look at Pauly, lying in his cot, he passed out with the doctors from the shadowed Vicarage.

Where the road to the village skirted the [228] Park they met Sydney, alone. She was walking fast, and with her head bent down: she did not see them till they were quite close to her. Then she looked up suddenly, and a quick flush overspread her pale face. She hesitated for a moment: then went forward with outstretched hand.

He had seen the account of the epidemic in the papers, and the Blue-friars had given him permission to volunteer his services. He was glad to have met Sydney to-day, as he should be—very busy—he expected, and there would be no seeing anybody, he believed.

And there he broke off, stammering, as the clear eyes seemed to ask the meaning of this strange manner from her brother Hugh, who had said at their last parting that “he understood.”

There was an awkward silence of full a minute before Sydney recollected herself and asked after Pauly. “Thank you, he is very ill,” said Pauly’s father.

And then Dr. Lorry, whose kind eyes had seen a good deal during Hugh’s rather halting explanation, interposed with professional authority.

“Miss Lisle, my dear young lady, you really must not stand about in the cold; you are looking quite chilled. Take an old man’s advice, walk home as fast as you can, and have a good cup of chocolate or cocoa as soon as you get to the Castle.”

“Thank you,” said Sydney, and the three men took the small tan-gloved hand again, and passed on to their work.

And Sydney passed on also, thinking with a strange, sore feeling in her heart, that Hugh had changed a good deal. He had not even seemed pleased to see her: Hugh—who had been her special friend from babyhood!

Had there ever been a time when Hugh had not wanted her before? She could not recollect it, if there were. How many times had she not sat beside a big, long-limbed school-boy, doing his preparation at the school-room table, with its much-kicked legs and much-inked table cover, and been proud to think she was “helping Hugh” when she blotted his exercises, or held the book, while he reeled off pages in some tongue unknown to her!

Had he ever failed to seem pleased when she offered her assistance, even when he was working with a pucker on his forehead, and [230] ten fingers running through his hair? He had always seemed to want the little Sydney in an inky pinafore, however busy he might be; but now he had changed.

“He did not think he should see her again—he would be very busy.” Could the Hugh of old days have spoken to her in that cool, indifferent tone? Sydney felt sure that he could not. For the first time the girl found the homeward walk too far for her active feet. The distance seemed unending through the Park.

Pauly was very ill, very likely going to die, and Hugh—Hugh did not care to see her any more.

CHAPTER XXI
FEVER-STRICKEN

“Cousin St. Quentin,” Sydney said, coming straight into the library, “I want to tell you that I saw and spoke to Hugh to-day. You must forgive me, please, this time—I won’t again.”

Her cousin looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes: at another time she would have been surprised to see no anger there at her confession, but now she did not seem to be surprised at anything. Pauly was very ill—perhaps going to die—and Hugh had not cared to see her. Nothing else seemed to matter very much.

“Go and lie down,” said St. Quentin. “You’ve been worrying about that poor little [232] chap at the Vicarage. Lie down till luncheon; then you will feel better.”

She felt dimly that his tone was kind in spite of her disobedience with regard to Hugh. With a sudden impulse she knelt down beside his couch and laid her head upon his hand. “I shall not disobey you again,” she said, “for Hugh—Hugh doesn’t care, I think, to see me now.”

She was on her feet again, and had left the room before he had time to answer her.

St. Quentin gazed after her with a softened look in his tired grey eyes. “Poor little soul!” he muttered.

Dr. Lorry looked in at the Castle as Lady Frederica and Miss Osric were sitting down to luncheon. Sydney had fallen asleep on the sofa in the morning-room, and Miss Osric would not rouse her. The old doctor refused luncheon and went to the library at once. His face was very grave.

“Is the little chap at the Vicarage any worse?” St. Quentin asked him sharply.

“Very little change since yesterday,” the old doctor said. “I have great hopes from young Chichester, and fresh treatment.... These young men, you know, are up in all the latest developments of science.”

“Badly, I’m afraid. Now the school is closed he wants it turned into a hospital, and to borrow nurses from Donisbro’, to work with the more effective women here. He thinks the patients will have very little chance of recovery in their own cottages.”

The marquess winced, then reached his desk and pen. “How much money will you want to start with?” he said. “I am, of course, accountable for all this. Save what lives you can, and never mind my pocket.”

There was no time for mincing matters. The doctor told him what would be required, and St. Quentin drew a cheque for the amount and signed it.

“Let me know when more is wanted,” he said. “And now will you go upstairs and look at Sydney. I think she needs change. If you agree, Lady Frederica shall take her off to the South of France somewhere to set her up after all this.”

Dr. Lorry made no comment upon this suggestion, but went quietly upstairs to Sydney. She was awake now, looking rather better for her sleep and eating a basin of soup, which Miss Osric had brought her.

Dr. Lorry sat down beside her on the sofa, [234] felt her pulse, looked into her eyes, and asked if she would like to go to bed.

“I think you would be more comfortable there,” he said, and Sydney did not contradict him.

“Well?” asked St. Quentin anxiously, as Dr. Lorry re-entered the brown library a few minutes later. “How about the South of France—or do you think sea air would be better for her?”

“I shouldn’t recommend you to consider the idea of change quite at once,” the old doctor observed cautiously. “You see, Miss Lisle has been a good deal about among the cottages, and——”

“Yes—yes; but that cottage where she held her meeting for the women was, I regret to say, in a most unhealthy condition, owing to defective drains, and——”

“Miss Lisle was in it for two hours twice a week, and oftener when that poor woman first fell ill,” the doctor persisted, as though his keen old eyes failed to see that the subject of the neglected cottages was a very sore [235] one to their owner. He hated himself, as he saw how the thin face flushed beneath his words, but something had to be said, and he said it.

“So I should not recommend your worrying over sending Miss Lisle away from home at present.”

“What do you mean?” St. Quentin had turned upon him like a flash and caught his hand as in a vice. “What is it? Don’t say the child is ill! Good heavens! not the fever!”

“Remember, she will have every possible advantage,” the old doctor faltered, “every chance that anybody could have of complete recovery. There is no need to be at all despondent, but I fear—don’t agitate yourself—I fear we must not deceive ourselves into the belief that she is going to escape the fever.”

Ten long days had gone by—the longest, Mr. Fenton thought, that he had ever known.

He had come straight down to the Castle on hearing of Sydney’s illness, to do what he could for Lord St. Quentin, under this fresh calamity which had fallen on what really seemed a doomed house.

He sat with the marquess in the library, [236] except when, morning and evening, he walked down to the improvised hospital to get the latest news of the battle raging there.

Sometimes it was Dr. Lorry, with the trimness gone from his person and his eyes a little bloodshot, who would come out and report to the lawyer waiting there in the deserted play-ground. Sometimes Hugh’s tall form and young haggard face would emerge from the school-door; or sometimes Miss Morrell, who had come from Donisbro’ when the doctors were at their wits’ end to find sufficient and efficient nurses, and had stayed ever since, toiling with the rest to save the many sick.

Or sometimes it was the Vicar, striding between the Vicarage and the hospital, who would stay to deliver his report upon the fight which he was sharing with the doctors and the nurses.

And Mr. Fenton would go back to Lord St. Quentin, lying staring dumbly at the fire, and thinking—thinking of that Christmas Day, when the girl who lay upstairs in the grip of fever had asked him if he could do nothing for the cottages. If he had only done it then, when she had asked him, what anxiety and distress would have been obviated!

“They are saving so many,” Mr. Fenton would say, “and that young Chichester is invaluable. Dr. Lorry cannot say enough for him. They are saving so many, that one cannot help feeling very hopeful for Miss Lisle.”

A specialist from London had come to see the girl on whom so many hopes were centred.

“She is very seriously ill,” had been his verdict—that verdict which seemed so terribly unsatisfying. “A great deal depends upon the nursing. There is no need to give up hope.”

Then he had gone away, leaving those who loved the girl to make what they could out of those brief sentences.

“She would have made a better job of the landlord business than I’ve done!” St. Quentin said to Mr. Fenton, again and again. “She cared for the people, and when I wouldn’t do my duty, tried to do it for me!”

“They are quite devoted to her in Lislehurst, and, indeed, at Loam and Styles as well,” [238] said Mr. Fenton. “It is most touching to see the way men and women come rushing from their cottages as I pass, to ask for the latest news of her. She has won their hearts in the short time she has been among them.”

“She cared for them, and that accounts for it,” said St. Quentin. “She even cared for me, though, God knows! I gave her small cause to do so. I took her from the people whom she loved, and cut her off as far as possible from intercourse with them. I made her unhappy for my own selfish ends, and now I’m going to lose her!”

“I would give anything to think I made her happy——” poor St. Quentin was going on, when he was checked by the entrance of a footman.

The footman withdrew, and in a minute [239] Hugh came into the library. He was very white as he went forward to the man who had taken Sydney from them. Neither attempted any conventional greeting, and Mr. Fenton’s murmured introduction was unheard by both.

“So you are Hugh Chichester?” St. Quentin said. “Tell me—if I wire to your father and mother to come down to Sydney, will they come?”

“Is she worse?” Hugh’s voice was metallic in the effort that he made to keep it steady.

“No!” St. Quentin spoke so loudly as to make the lawyer jump. “Tell me, would they come?”

Hugh laughed unsteadily. The question seemed to him almost a mockery. “They’d come to her from the world’s end,” he said.

“Send it off as you pass the post office,” he said to Hugh, who took the form and went out silently.

All was very quiet in the nursery at the Vicarage. At the foot of the little iron cot knelt the Vicar, his face hidden in his hands. Hugh was bending over it, his arm under Pauly’s head, his eyes intently watching the worn baby face.

Dr. Lorry had been sent for to the Castle. Short as Sydney’s illness had been in comparison with little Pauly’s, its crisis had come to-night, and they knew that before the wet February dawn crept up into the sky they would see whether life or death were to be the girl’s portion.

“Put a light in the passage window next her room, if—when—she turns the corner,” Hugh had said to Dr. Lorry, when the old man was summoned to the Castle that evening. “I must stay with Pauly to-night, but—put a light in the window! I can see it from the Vicarage!”

“I will, my boy,” the old doctor said, and went up to the Castle, thinking deeply.

“One” boomed out from the clock upon the church tower, and Pauly stirred and moaned. His father was on his feet in a second, but Hugh signed for silence and put something [241] in a spoon between the child’s lips. Pauly cuddled himself close into the circle of the young man’s arm, and closed his eyes.

An hour went slowly by. Hugh was sitting now upon a high nursery chair beside the little cot, but sideways, that he might not move the arm on which the child was resting. Two struck, and the Vicar, with a long look at the little wasted face, rose from his knees and stole out to the hospital.

Three struck, and four: the Vicar had returned, with a whispered, word to Hugh that all was well at the hospital and in the village, and Dr. Mitchell, who had come to their help, satisfied. Outside it was very dark. Mr. Seaton rose and looked long and earnestly from the window.

“Is there a light in the passage next her room?” Hugh’s voice was hardly more than a thread of sound.

The nursery clock, ticking on evenly, sounded [242] very loud in the stillness. The nurse stole into the room to peer round the shaded lamp at the little patient, and then go away again.

Five struck, and with it came the first faint sleepy twitter of a half-awakened bird.

Pauly stirred: the Vicar raised his head: the child looked at his father for a moment with a half-puzzled smile of recognition; then, with a little drowsy sound of contentment, dropped back upon the pillows, peacefully asleep.

Hugh rose from his cramped posture and rubbed his stiffened arm. “Thank God!” he said. Mr. Seaton’s hand closed over his in a way that was more expressive than any words had power to be. “The little chap will do now,” the young doctor told the father gently, and left him with his child.

He went down the stairs like a man in a dream, looked into the hospital, and then directed his steps straight towards the Castle. The whole world seemed unreal to him to-night; he was unconscious that he had not slept or eaten for hours. All his powers seemed centred on one thought: Was there a light in that passage window?

The lodge gates had been left open for the convenience of the doctors, and Hugh [243] made his way unopposed through the Park, where Sydney had gone that first morning.

As he drew near the Castle he saw that he was not the only watcher. Half a dozen figures were grouped near the marble steps, waiting, for the most part, silently. As he joined them Hugh saw that one was old Banks the groom, and the rest men from the village. No one made any comment when the young doctor stood among them. A common trouble makes the roughest quick of understanding.

“She were a rare one for the riding,” he said in a low husky voice. “Bless you! I’ve put a many up, but never one as took to it better than she did. And his lordship were fine and pleased, he were, for I saw the look in his eyes as we went past they windows of the library.

“‘Please tell me anything I don’t do right, Banks,’ she says, as pretty as can be, ‘for I want to ride well and please my cousin.’”

Hugh went and stood close beside the old man, and silence fell again upon the little group of watchers.

“It were her as were all for the building [244] of they new cottages on the hill,” Sawyer said presently. “Mr. Fane, he told me so himself. His lordship wrote to him as it were ‘by the wish of his heir, Miss Lisle.’”

There was another pause, and in the silence they heard the distant clock upon the church strike six, followed immediately by the deep booming notes of the Castle clock above the stables.

Hugh involuntarily turned his head to hear from what the deep solemn sounds proceeded. As he turned old Banks caught his arm in a convulsive grip—“Look, sir!”

A hand had come to the window in the passage, dark and shrouded till that moment, and had left a light there.

A minute later, and the young doctor, of whose courage Dr. Lorry could not say enough, was hurrying back towards the village, crying like a child.

CHAPTER XXII
GIVEN BACK

Sydney seemed to herself to have a good many odd dreams during that time of illness.

Strange faces looked out of a great darkness, and pictures came and went like magic-lantern slides. But one thing always stayed, and that was fever.

Then there came a time when she seemed to herself to be all alone in a dark place where no one came to her, though she cried continually for mother, and was certain that if only this weight would leave her head, she could lift it and call loud enough for mother to hear her!

And then, quite suddenly, there was shaded lamp-light in the rose bedroom, and mother was sitting there beside her bed.

She tried to speak, but found the words did not come; nor did a hand, that seemed lying loosely on the counterpane belonging [246] to nobody, move from its place, but mother took it in hers and kissed it. Sydney had a vague kind of feeling that everything was right now mother had come.

Then there was a time when things grew clearer; when she knew that there was sometimes daylight on the wall and sometimes lamp-light, and then father was beside her, looking at her through the gold-rimmed eye-glasses she knew so well. And presently Mr. Seaton was kneeling by her bed, saying words which she was dimly conscious he had said before. Then suddenly everything was quite clear, and a mild spring-like air was coming in through the open window, and she felt as if all the dreams had passed away in that long night of fever.

“I always said she would turn the corner when Mrs. Chichester came!” Dr. Lorry declared, rubbing his hands gleefully; and though of course all credit should be given to the doctors and the nurses, I think Mrs. Chichester’s presence and her strong mother-love had no small amount to do with calling back the girl, whose feet had gone so very near the margin of that river we call death.

Dr. Chichester himself brought the news that Sydney had turned the sharp corner and [247] come back to those who loved her, to the kinsman keeping his watch on the sofa in the library, and I think any feelings of antagonism towards the Chichesters that St. Quentin may have had left, were quite swept away by the look on the doctor’s face and the choke in his voice as he said, “She has turned the corner now—thank God for it!”

The marquess even went so far as to remember Hugh and his feelings and, unconscious of that watch the young man had kept outside the Castle, desired that a servant should instantly go down with a message to the improvised hospital.

It was the next morning—a strange, disorganised morning—when everybody seemed to be united in the one absorbing gladness, that St. Quentin asked to see the Vicar when he came down from his visit to Sydney.

Mr. Seaton wondered at the summons, but rejoiced over it with all his heart. It had been one of his great griefs that he was allowed to give no help or comfort to this man who stood so plainly in need of both.

“So you’ve pulled your boy round?” was St. Quentin’s greeting, as the Vicar came into the library. “I can’t tell you how glad I am of that—the jolly little chap! That will be [248] something to tell Sydney when she’s strong enough to hear news.... That isn’t what I want to say, though.” He stopped; then brought the last words out with a rush: “Isn’t there something you pray in churches when you’ve something—very special—to be thankful for?”

“Yes,” said the Vicar, sympathising with the effort in his tone—“there is a prayer of thanksgiving for ‘great mercies vouchsafed’—that is what you mean, I think?”

St. Quentin nodded. “I didn’t exactly deserve mercy,” he said, “but I am thankful for it! She’ll be a credit to the name, you know.... Say the prayer for me, will you, now? I can’t go to church, you see!”

And the Vicar, kneeling, thanked God for more than His gift of life to the girl upstairs!

“Come and look me up again when you’ve time, will you?” said the marquess, when Mr. Seaton took his leave; and the Vicar said, “I will,” with all his heart.

Sydney was very happy in her dainty rose-room, with mother sitting by her bedside, holding her hand: she was very happy when carried to the sofa in the morning-room, where mother read to her, or talked and worked. “But I want to go downstairs and see St. [249] Quentin,” she said, and Dr. Lorry was prevailed upon to sanction the proceeding as soon as it was at all safe.

Grand preparations were made downstairs for the great event. Dickson worried St. Quentin to the verge of distraction with his repeated tidyings of the library, and would have worried him into a very bad temper if the preparations had been made on behalf of anyone but Sydney.

A deputation arrived from the convalescent village to know if anyone would be allowed to see “our young lady,” and though Dr. Lorry was obliged to decline such attentions for his patient on her first appearance, the deputation was dismissed with the assurance that Miss Lisle would soon be out and among them once more.

Dr. Chichester came down again for twenty-four hours to see how “his little girl” bore the move, and Sydney had another visitor.

“I suppose she won’t be happy without the paragon!” St. Quentin said to Dr. Lorry, “so you’d better bring him up with you to tea. But mind, he’s not to be up to any of his fool’s tricks with her—talking as though they were mere acquaintances, as he did when last they [250] met. Tell him to be natural and brotherly, or else to stop away!”

But Hugh came. Perhaps his manner was not quite brotherly as he came forward to arrange the sofa for the slight girl whom his father carried in so easily, but Sydney did not seem to find anything amiss with it.

She lay smiling blissfully upon them all—father—mother—Hugh—St. Quentin. “Oh, Cousin St. Quentin, if only you could get well I should be quite happy!” she said.

CHAPTER XXIII
WHAT HUGH TOLD

St. Quentin and Sydney looked up; the latter with a quick flush, which made her prettier than ever, her cousin thought.

She was reading the paper to him, with a praiseworthy effort, hitherto not crowned with much success, to feel a keen interest in the “Imperial Parliament.”

“Oh—Hugh,” St. Quentin said, with a glance at Sydney. “I suppose he has run down to see Lorry. Ask him to come in, John.”

Hugh was looking rather excited, and his voice could not repress a certain eagerness, as he took the hand the marquess held out. St. Quentin could not help liking the look of the clean-cut, honest young face, with straightforwardness and self-control in every line of it.

“It’s a frightful pity he hasn’t ten thousand [252] a year,” the marquess thought to himself, watching the way Sydney’s eyes shone as she greeted the young man. “If he had anything respectable in the way of an income, he should have the child, upon my word he should! But a young doctor with no special prospects!” and he shook his head.

“You wanted me, eh? Hope you left the Doctor and Mrs. Chichester quite well? Sydney, hadn’t you better get your ride while the sun’s out? It’s a first-class morning, and you’ll see Mr. Chichester at lunch, you know, and get all your town news then.”

Hugh’s eyes followed the graceful figure from the room. He had not seen her before in long dresses and with the hair coiled round the shapely head. Though the presentation had not taken place, partly owing to the illness, and later to Sydney’s obstinate refusal to leave the cousin to whom she was becoming daily more necessary, even Lady Frederica had seen the impossibility of keeping the child-Sydney any longer.

They had grown used to the change at the Castle, but Hugh saw her for the first time with the unspeakable charm of sweet young womanhood upon her.

“Oh, I know!” poor Hugh burst out. “You needn’t be afraid, Lord St. Quentin. I know I’ve got to keep out of her way all I can. You needn’t be afraid of my forgetting that I never can be anything but her brother Hugh—some one to stand by her if she should need any one to do it, but never to presume on that!”

He walked to the window, and stood staring out at the fresh green of the Park and the spring glory of the garden, all ablaze with crocuses, in lilac, white, and gold.

“Well,” St. Quentin said, “I think the child would have been a good deal happier if circumstances hadn’t put her into this position. But they have, and she will make a first-rate Lady St. Quentin one of these days, I imagine, though there’s no doubt she’ll spoil the tenants shamefully, you Chichesters having taught her to think of everyone except herself. You are an unselfish family, and you’ve taught her to be the same. I wish—I wish—you wanted something I could give you.”

“I don’t want anything except to see Sydney [254] happy,” poor Hugh said, and then he came and sat down by his host. “I’m forgetting what I came about,” he said. “Will you forgive me for touching on a subject which must be rather painful to you?”

“Oh, yes, they are certain to be all right,” Hugh said; “it isn’t that. There was a man brought into the Blue-friars the other day, frightfully hurt internally, and we thought it was all up with him, or would be soon, at least. Well, after a bit I was with him alone, and saw he was in great distress of mind, to add to his other troubles. I got presently at what was wrong. He gathered that we thought him in a very bad way, and had it on his mind that he had once wronged a man frightfully. I got the poor chap to make his confession to me, and took it down, and he signed it. His name is Duncombe.”

“His confession was this. He was riding your horse, MacIvor, in a race against a certain Sir Algernon Bridge and another man—I forget [255] his name—it didn’t signify. Duncombe was in trouble of some kind and wanted money over and above the pay you promised him for riding. A letter from you, written just before the race, promised him an extra fifty if he won it. He went and injured in some way Sir Algernon’s horse, Doll, the night before, but being in a funk he overdid the business, and the horse bowled over sooner than he meant it to. There were enquiries, and Sir Algernon’s jockey accused Duncombe. In his fright he declared—forgive me, please—that he acted by your orders, producing the letter you had written him to prove his words. He was awfully ashamed of that part of the business, for of course he knew all along you only meant fair play. But he said he had an old mother who depended on him, and it wouldn’t mean prison for a gentleman. I don’t believe he understood it meant something infinitely worse. Sir Algernon Bridge took the letter from him and bribed him to say nothing more about it. He was only too glad to hold his tongue at first, for Sir Algernon assured him that he was your friend, and intended to suppress the letter for your sake, but later on he seems to have had qualms at having acted unfairly by you. He said he never meant to do you a [256] wrong, for you had been extremely kind to him. He seems to have guessed later that Sir Algernon meant no good to you; for his old mother lives at Loam, and comes to Sydney’s work-parties. They kept him up to some knowledge of your doings.... He asked me to give you his confession, and begged that you would make what use of it you liked, and not consider him.”

St. Quentin took the paper from Hugh’s hand and read it slowly. What would he not have given for it long ago? Now he was dying, and nothing seemed to matter very much.

“Yes, and will live, I think. It’s a most extraordinary case; quite unique in the annals of the hospital, and we are awfully proud of the operation which has saved him. His injury had till now been considered hopeless, but Sir Anthony is a genius, and he’s pulled him through, we hope. I am going down the village to tell Lorry of the case, if you don’t want me any longer. He is so interested in all fresh developments of science.”

“Thank you very much,” St. Quentin said. “Come back to luncheon, and tell that poor fellow, when you see him next, that it’s—all right.”

Hugh went through the Park and down the village, where cottages of a greatly improved kind were rising rapidly in place of the old ones. The thinning trees of the Park told at what cost this long-neglected duty was performed.

He soon reached the charming, roomy redbrick Queen Anne house where Dr. Lorry lived, and was receiving the heartiest of welcomes from his old friend in the quaint, dark, comfortable dining-room.

“My dear boy, this is capital!—capital, I say! I am quite delighted. You must put in a few days with me now you’re here, for all your patients will be clamouring to see you. I get nothing but enquiries after ‘Dr. Hugh.’ You’ve quite taken the wind out of my sails here, I can tell you, and that little rascal Pauly—‘I want Dr. Hugh,’ he cries, whenever I go up to physic him!”

“Ah! in my anecdotage,” chuckled the old [258] doctor. “A friend I hadn’t seen for thirty years came home the other day from Africa, and looked me up. ‘Why, you hardly look a day older, Lorry!’ he said, ‘and I quite expected to find you in your dotage!’”

“‘The stage before it— anecdotage , Tom!’” I said. “I thought he would have died!”

“No, no. I’m getting old, my boy, and thinking of retiring,” said the doctor. “Little Pauly isn’t far wrong when he cries out for a younger man!”

“I should just about think so, and more rampagious than ever. Father can’t let him out of his sight, you know, but I don’t think he altogether spoils him. Miss Lisle and Miss Osric do that. By the way, though it’s not announced yet, I think we may feel pretty sure the Vicar won’t let Miss Osric leave Lislehurst when Miss Lisle dispenses with a governess.”

“Is that so?” Hugh said, looking pleased. “I’m very glad. Sydney thinks no end of Miss Osric, I know, and the Vicar is a downright brick. And Pauly wants a mother.”

“Yes, he won’t get so many chances of tumbling off church towers or catching fevers then,” the doctor said. “It will be a fine thing for the little monkey in every way. And I agree with you about Miss Osric: she’s a very nice girl, a very nice girl indeed. But Master Pauly has to do the courting for his father now, for the Vicar and Lord St. Quentin have struck up quite a friendship; that’s a new departure, isn’t it? It’s very good for St. Quentin! Well, and what news have you brought me down from town, my dear boy? Anything fresh on the placards this morning?”

“Only a big jewel robbery,” Hugh said, laughing. “I really came to see Lord St. Quentin on a bit of business concerning him that I chanced to come across. And, while I was here, I thought I would give myself the pleasure of looking you up, and telling you of our last triumph at the Blue-friars. A really remarkable case: I’m sure you will be interested.”

Hugh was right in his conviction, but even he had not expected such a violent interest as his old friend displayed.

Dr. Lorry leaned forward, putting quick, sharp questions as to the exact nature of the [260] injury which had been operated on so successfully, and finally, as Hugh concluded, seized the young man’s hand and nearly wrung it off his wrist.

“Thank God! thank God!” he cried. “It has saved one man; it can save another!”

“What do you mean?” Hugh cried. The old man’s intense excitement was infectious.

Dr. Lorry stood up, trembling with eagerness. “Lord St. Quentin’s injury is the same as that which you have been describing ,” he said. “If your Sir Anthony has saved this Duncombe, we must have him down to save St. Quentin!”

CHAPTER XXIV
THE WAITING OF TWO

Hugh’s hero, the great surgeon who gave his services to the Blue-friars Hospital, had come down to see St. Quentin, and perform on him the operation which had saved the life of the man Duncombe.

Under these circumstances Lady Frederica declined absolutely remaining at the Castle.

“My nerves really wouldn’t stand it,” she explained. “I hate anything to do with illness, but hitherto St. Quentin’s has been kept comparatively in the background: in fact, it has been possible to forget it. But an operation—with doctors and nurses hovering round—and bulletins upon the door, and people expecting one to have a full, true, and particular account of how the patient is at one’s finger’s ends! No, thank you. I shall go to town, and Sydney shall come with me.”

“If I must go away, let me go to the Deanery!” she implored. “I can’t go with Lady Frederica! I must go to somebody who cares too!”

“Who cares too?” he muttered, then with an effort turned to her and spoke aloud.

“Sydney, I’ll tell you this. If, in God’s mercy, I get through the operation, I am going to follow your advice, and tell the girl I love just everything, as I told you.”

Sydney got her way, and went to the Deanery, accompanied by Miss Osric, leaving Lady Frederica to go off to town alone.

The third day of her absence from the Castle had come—a long dreary day, which seemed unending. It was to relieve the strain of that waiting time that Katharine suggested, when the shadows were falling long about the Close, that they should go across to Oliver’s, to choose a gold chain as a birthday present for the little cousin Sylvia, whose birthday was to be on the morrow.

A shabbily-dressed man was just concluding [263] some bargain with the jeweller as the two girls came into the shop—some bargain with which he seemed very much dissatisfied. “It’s worth ever so much more, confound you for a screw!” they heard him say. “Why, that’s two quid less than you gave the parson for it. I only brought it here because I thought you’d give a better price for your own thing.”

Sydney started violently, for the voice was Sir Algernon’s, and on the counter between him and Oliver there lay her little watch.

Katharine had recognised him also, and her eyes flashed. “Come away, Sydney dear,” she said.

Low as she spoke, he caught the words and turned. But for his voice, Sydney hardly would have known him.

The light of a pale spring evening fell upon his face through the open doorway of the jeweller’s shop, and showed up pitilessly the wreck he had made of it. His eyes were bloodshot and furtive, and the lines had deepened round them, while his hair showed very grey above the ears. He looked to-day far older than his forty-one years warranted.

Sir Algernon had followed them into the street, and was gazing after them as though he wished to speak. Sydney noted the shabbiness of his dress and the fact that he had not shaved that morning.

He heard her and came forward. The hand with which he lifted his hat shook. Katharine drew herself away from him, but Sydney stood her ground.

“Thank you,” he said, “I only want you to give Quin a message from me. He wrote to me, you know, to tell me that he had Duncombe’s written confession of the part I’d played after that miserable race, but didn’t mean to publish it, or show me up. He’s treating me a long way better than I treated him. I want you to tell him that, if you will, and also tell him that he won’t be bothered by me any more. That evening I left St. Quentin Castle I had had a wire to tell me that I was practically ruined. The man of business to whom I had pinned my faith—as far as I ever pinned it upon anybody—had taken a leaf out of my book, and gone in for gambling—speculation [265] rather. When he’d finished his own money he used mine, relying on the fact that I was too busy screwing poor old Quin to attend to my own affairs. Of course he thought he’d get it back; they always do! But he didn’t, and the shock killed him. That was what the wire told me, and it was that that made me so hard on Quin. To make him pay up then was my last chance, you see; but you baulked that! You won the game, and I drop it for the future. I’m going abroad somewhere now; tell Quin he’s done with me for good and all, and I have sold the watch I bought for you to pay my passage out. Good-bye, Miss Lisle.”

“I will tell St. Quentin,” Sydney answered gravely, holding out her hand. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he said again, then added, as though half against his will, “After all, I’m not particularly sorry that you won the game.”

He walked off quickly in the opposite direction, and passed from Sydney’s life as suddenly as he had entered it.

“I hope you did not mind my speaking to him, Katharine,” she said, as the two went through the cool, green, peaceful Close together. “I could not have done it, if—if—he had [266] not been so shabby. But I think if— when he gets well, and we tell him, that St. Quentin will be glad.”

“I believe you were right,” Katharine said quietly, and the two passed into the Deanery together.

A great hush seemed upon everything, and as the girls sat in the deep window of the drawing-room when dinner was over, the whole world seemed to wear a look of listening. It was one of those wonderfully mild spring evenings which March sometimes gives us as a foretaste of the summer that is coming. Katharine let the fire burn low, and did not close the window.

There was no breeze to stir the daffodils and tulips, which had lost their colour in the fading of the light: across the Close the grey Cathedral stood silent and solemn, looking down with grave, infinite pity upon the fleeting troubles and anxieties of the people living their little lives around its walls.

To and fro across the shadowy turf the Dean walked, with his hands behind him, deep in thought. The soft, sweet-scented spring darkness had fallen, but Katharine would not ring for lights. The girls sat quietly together, their hands clasped in the dimness.

Into the silence came the mellow chime of the cathedral clock: the four quarters, which had passed while they were sitting there, pealed out one after another, and then the nine deep strokes of the hour.

It was too dark to see her companion’s face, and Katharine did not answer her.

Hard upon her words there came a sound of quick, sharp footsteps ringing out upon the flagged path running through the Close. The Dean raised his head and stood still.

“Canon Molyneux returning,” Katharine said, but she rose, with a strained expectancy in her position.

The steps came nearer. Sydney darted down the stairs, and was flinging back the heavy front door in a moment. “Hugh!”

Katharine had followed Sydney to the hall, but when a moment later the girl looked round for her, she had gone.

CHAPTER XXV
IN THE DEANERY GARDEN

Katharine Morrell sat in a sheltered nook in the Deanery garden, all flooded with the mellow sunshine of an April afternoon.

The trim, box-edged garden beds were gay with spring flowers, and the air was full of the song of birds and of the faint, sweet, sleepy scent of the poplar.

Before her the great grey cathedral reared its mighty pile against a sky of pale, pure blue, relieved by clouds of fleecy whiteness. Pigeons were sunning themselves here and there on some projecting buttress, or in some quaintly-carved niche. The whole world seemed full of peace and hope and life renewed.

Katharine’s hat was on the grass beside her, and the soft spring breeze lightly stirred the fair hair on her smooth, white brow, and [269] brought a touch of pure rose colour to her fair face.

On her knee there lay an opened letter in Sydney’s hand-writing. She took it up and read the last page through again.

“It is so good to see St. Quentin walk across the room, even though still leaning on a stick. Dr. Lorry says he is making a most marvellous recovery, and Sir Anthony, who has been down to the Castle twice since the operation, is delighted with him. Sir Anthony said several ever such nice things about Hugh; I wish father could have heard him. He would have been so pleased.

“St. Quentin actually went yesterday to see that poor man Duncombe, who has come down here to live with his mother. He is to do light work in the gardens as soon as he is strong enough. He was so pleased to see St. Quentin, and he could not say enough about Hugh’s kindness to him while he was at the Blue-friars Hospital. He seems a nice man, and is terribly sorry for all the harm which he has done St. Quentin, though St. Quentin tells him ‘not to think about it any more.’

“This morning we have been to call upon the Vicar. St. Quentin walked all round the [270] Vicarage garden to look at Mr. Seaton’s hyacinths, and was not over-tired. Doesn’t that sound like being really better?

“He talks of driving in to Donisbro’ to thank the Dean for his kind enquiries.”

It was this last sentence that Katharine read again and again, with a light in her eyes and a flush upon her cheek.

“He talks of driving in to Donisbro’ to thank the Dean for his kind enquiries.”

Bees hummed in and out among the flowers, with their peculiar sound of infinite contentment; along the sunny borders the yellow heads of the daffodils were nodding gently in the breeze. Katharine thought she had never known the garden look so lovely—never since that spring day nine long years ago, when her father brought Lord Lisle, as St. Quentin had been called then, into it for the first time.

Nine years—was it really nine years since that April afternoon when she had gone out to gather daffodils to fill the vases in the drawing-room?

She was eighteen then, and dressed in a gown of pale green, she remembered. Her father had a fancy for green and loved to see her in it.

She remembered how the tall young man at the Dean’s side had looked at that young Katharine of nine years ago, and how presently they were walking side by side along the straight flagged garden paths, he carrying her bunch of daffodils.

What had they said? Nothing very much, she fancied. They talked about the flowers, and he spoke of his mother’s famous orchids at St. Quentin Castle, and said how much he should like the Dean and Miss Morrell to see them.

Nine years ago; but she could recall every line of the tall young figure, with handsome head erect, and eyes that said so much. She could even bring back to her memory the very look of the strong, shapely hand that held the daffodils—her daffodils.

Had not daffodils been the flowers she loved best ever since—yes, ever since! though she had tried to think she hated them upon a certain day five years ago when she had burnt a little dried-up bunch of them which for four years had lain among her treasures.

Had a spring and daffodil time ever come and gone through all these nine years that she had not thought of the tall figure and the handsome face, and of the grey eyes [272] that looked at her more often than the flowers he had come to see?

A rather faltering step was upon the flagged path skirting the close-shaven lawn. Katharine looked up.

He was there before her, the man of whom she had been thinking—the same, yet not the same. There was little to remind her of the gay young lover of nine years ago, except the eyes, which looked forth from the worn face with the old expression in them—the old expression she remembered so well, only deepened and intensified.

She was at his side in a moment. “You should not be standing! Take my arm. Here is an easy chair for you.”

Around them hyacinths were springing everywhere about the grass—it was a fancy of the Dean’s to grow them so, instead of in the garden beds. The air seemed filled with their rare fragrance.

Under the grey line of the old Deanery ran a border bright with golden daffodils.

“You stood there when I saw you first,” St. Quentin said. “You were outlined against [273] the grey wall in your pale green gown, and you held a bunch of daffodils in one hand. You wore no hat, and the breeze was stirring your hair on your temples as it is to-day.”

“And I have changed more,” he answered gravely. “Katharine, look at me.”

“You know—you must know why it is I have come here to you to-day,” he said, his voice vibrating strangely. “Katharine! I have no right to ask or expect that you can care for me still. And I am not here to offer you my love; I gave it to you nine long years ago, and you have had it ever since. I have come to make you a confession.”

He told the story of his selfishness and folly—hiding nothing. She listened silently, her head bent, her hands clasped on her knee.

“I have no right to offer you what’s left from the wreck I’ve made of my life,” he concluded, “but my love is yours—as it always has been since that first spring afternoon I [274] saw you, as it always must be through life and beyond it.”

“You have no faith,” she said, “though perhaps I hardly deserve that you should believe in my love after that cruel letter that I wrote five years ago. St. Quentin, don’t you know that I have cared always?—that I cared even when I told you that I never wished to see or hear of you again? It is not possible to give up caring, and, dear, I care more, far more now, than ever I cared in that bright spring time long ago. Dear, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t deserve it,” he said hoarsely, “but please God you sha’n’t regret your trust and your forgiveness.”

“We both have something to forgive,” she said; and then he caught her to him with a murmured, “My darling! my darling!” and there fell a silence on the two in the flower-filled garden, flooded with the mellow sunshine of that April afternoon. And overhead a full-throated [275] thrush broke into its liquid song—a song which was so wonderfully full of gladness that it almost seemed as though it spoke the words of thankfulness to which they could not give voice.

The silver-haired Dean found the two among the hyacinths, when he came down the paved walk an hour later, and was filled at once with kindly solicitude upon his guest’s behalf.

“My dear St. Quentin, it is most delightful to see you on your feet again; but, my dear boy, what rashness to come all the way to Donisbro’ so soon! What was your doctor thinking of? What could possess you to do anything so foolish?”

The Marquess wondered vaguely what had been the reason he had given to himself and others for his visit to Donisbro’. Katharine, with a little gleam of laughter in her clear eyes, came to his assistance.

“St. Quentin came to return thanks in person for your kind enquiries, father,” she said, taking the old man’s hands in both hers. “That was so, wasn’t it, St. Quentin? And while he was here he thought he had better tell me something as well.”

“Will you forgive me, sir, and trust her with me?” said St. Quentin, holding out his hand. “I am not worthy of her, but with God’s help I’ll try to do my best to be so, and to make her happy. Will you give her to me?”

The old man’s warm handclasp was sufficient answer, and made the hearty words, “With all my heart,” unnecessary. And he added, as he drew his daughter to him, kissing her upon the forehead, “I am not afraid to trust her to you now , St. Quentin.”

“Please God, you shan’t regret it, sir,” St. Quentin said, as he had said before to Katharine, and the three went toward the Deanery together along the path beside the daffodil-filled border.

“It was little Sydney who sent me here to-day,” St. Quentin said to Katharine, as they stood a moment just inside the low-browed, quaintly-carved stone porch of the old Deanery, looking back on what must be to them for evermore an enchanted garden; “it was she whose faith in love’s endurance sent me here to-day to test it, Katharine. God bless the child for that, and for all!”

CHAPTER XXVI
A HOME-COMING

“’Tis May without and May within!” might well have been Sydney’s song, as she literally danced along the Park on a perfect afternoon a few weeks later.

Though she and Miss Osric had been up since seven o’clock, the day had seemed all too short for everything she wanted to crowd into it.

“No one should do the flowers but herself,” she declared, and Mackintosh groaned over the ravages she made in “his conservatories” and “his gardens.” But Miss Lisle was a privileged person in his eyes, so his groans were only inward, and he actually went so far as to walk round the conservatories with her, cutting what she wanted, with the face of a martyr at the stake!

“Not that I grudge flowers in reason to her ladyship,” he explained, “but what’s to [278] become of my flower-show next month, miss, I ask you?”

“Indeed, I won’t take all your flowers,” said Sydney; “but surely, Mackintosh, you want the Castle to be gay as much as I do when Lord St. Quentin is bringing home his bride at last!”

“Well, miss, I’ll not say but that I do rejoice with all my heart,” the old man said. “And a fine upstanding ladyship we shall have, says I! I mind her well enough when she come here first with the Dean, and looked at my flowers for all the world as if they were Christians, and understood what she said to ’em. ‘Oh, you beauties! you lovely things!’ she cried as she comes into the conservatories, as his lordship he was showing to her. No, miss, I don’t grudge my flowers, in reason—not to you or to her ladyship!”

The wedding had taken place very quietly a fortnight ago. Both Katharine and St. Quentin felt that they had waited long enough for the happiness that had so nearly never come at all. They were married early one morning, in one of the little side chapels of the great cathedral, by Katharine’s white-haired father, with only Sydney and the little cousin Sylvia present, and old Dr. Lorry, [279] who insisted upon coming, to see how his patient got through the ceremony. There were so few relations upon either side to come, even if the health of the bridegroom had been fit for anything but the quietest of weddings. St. Quentin asked Lady Frederica to be present from a sense of duty, but was neither surprised nor disappointed when she wrote to explain it was impossible to expect her to attend a wedding which was fixed for so unconscionably early an hour, but she sent her best wishes to them both. She also sent a handsome wedding present, for which the bill came in afterwards to St. Quentin. So there were only those few there to hear the words that made Katharine and St. Quentin man and wife at last. The honeymoon had been passed in a health-giving cruise on the Mediterranean, and now they were to come home.

Lady Frederica had never returned to the Castle after St. Quentin’s operation, and it cannot be said that her nephew missed her. He invited Mrs. Chichester to come and stay with Sydney during the period of his convalescence, and inwardly determined, as he saw the delight with which the girl showed all her favourite haunts to “mother,” that she should [280] have at least the female portion of the house of Chichester to stay with her as often as she liked. In fact, Katharine had already expressed her intention of being great friends with them all.

But Mrs. Chichester had gone back to London now, and for the fortnight of the honeymoon Miss Osric and Sydney had been alone, and had certainly made good use of their time in the business of arranging a welcome for St. Quentin and his bride.

The Castle was ablaze with flowers and the air ablaze with sunshine, as Sydney, her labours finished, but too excited to sit still and wait, went dancing onward through the Park and out into the village, where the hedges were fast breaking into the bridal white of hawthorn blossom. Miss Osric, as soon as all the work was finished, had discreetly betaken herself to the Vicarage, leaving the girl to welcome Katharine and her cousin alone.

It was four o’clock: they would hardly be here for another quarter of an hour, Sydney thought to herself, and she slackened her pace and looked upward at the gorgeous decorations with which the little village was aflame.

The children were all drawn up in a body [281] on the village green, under the charge of the schoolmistress, and armed with little, tight, hard bunches of flowers, to cast before the happy pair. Most of the tenantry, the farmers on horseback, were waiting at the top of the village at the turning on the Dacreshaw road. Some few of the women, however, were remaining quietly at the cottage doors, satisfied without that first view of the bride and bridegroom which the others seemed to think so desirable.

Among the number of these last was Mrs. Sawyer, who, with a healthy colour in the face that used to look so sickly, was standing smiling at the neat white gate of her new cottage.

Sydney paused to shake hands with her and ask if everything in the new cottage were entirely satisfactory.

“Why, that it is, miss,” was the hearty response, “if it weren’t for just a little leakage in the boiler. But there, miss, I’ve no call to complain, for indeed I scarcely know myself with my beautiful tiled kitchen, as is almost too good to use, and my back-kitchen as is fit for duchesses to work in, and all the rest as ’is lordship ’as done for me. Reckon that there boiler is my crumpled rose-leaf, miss!”

Mrs. Sawyer was so serious that Sydney felt it would not do to laugh, though the description of the large black boiler as “a rose-leaf” made the corners of the mouth twitch ominously.

She volunteered to come and look at it, and was bending down to examine the defective tap, when a roar of distant cheering made both forget the leaking boiler and rush wildly to the door. “They are coming!”

Round the bend in the road, under the great arch wreathed with flowers and bearing the inscription, “Welcome to the bride and bridegroom,” bowled the carriage. There they were!

St. Quentin, still very thin, but upright, hat in hand, smiling and nodding to his tenants as they roared their welcome, and by his side Katharine, fair and stately, unchanged, except that the sadness had passed from her eyes.

“Hullo! what are you doing wandering about alone?” St. Quentin asked, laughing, when they had exchanged greetings. “Lucky for you Aunt Rica isn’t here! What is it?”

“I am trying to make out what is wrong with Mrs. Sawyer’s boiler,” she explained; “it leaks.”

The marquess said something in a low tone to his wife, jumped down, handed her from the carriage, and turned to Greaves, wooden with surprise upon the box, at this extraordinary conduct on the part of the bride and bridegroom.

“Drive on, Greaves; we’ll walk up presently. Now, Mrs. Sawyer, let’s have a look at the boiler.”

“You could have knocked me down with a feather!” Mrs. Sawyer was wont to say when dilating on the story afterwards. “For in they all come, as sure as I’m a living woman! and down goes his lordship on his knees, as interested in that boiler as if it was a newspaper full of the quarrellings of that there silly Parliament, and turns the tap about, and then jumps up and looks about to see if the workmen had left any putty, and as pleased as may be when he finds it, and down on his knees again—and thankful I was as I’d scrubbed the floor only that morning—and makes as neat a job of it as may be, just to last till the plumber comes to do it proper, he says; and full of jokes all the time he was, as made me laugh till I cried nearly!

“And her ladyship sitting by, in my best chair, and nursing Liza’s baby, as though she [284] fair loved to have it on her knee; and our young lady, bless her! looking as bright and happy as though her world was just made of spring and sunshine, as I hopes it may be!

“And his lordship made a rare good job of the boiler too,” she would add, as though anybody had presumed to doubt his powers as a plumber, “and washed his hands in the back kitchen when he finished, and dried ’em on the round towel, not a bit proud, and when he knocks his ’ead against the lintel going out, he laughs again, and says, says he—‘Fane must make my tenants’ doors a little higher,’ says he, ‘for I mean there to be room for me to come in,’ he says.”

The three walked together through the Park with the late afternoon sunshine glittering on the glory of fresh green beneath and overhead, and up the marble steps to the splendid castle towering above them.

CHAPTER XXVII
DESDICHADO

It was a brilliant June morning rather more than a year after the events mentioned in the last chapter.

The air was full of the song of birds and the hum of bees, and of another sound to which Sydney Lisle was listening, as she stood upon the steps of the Castle, shading eyes that danced joyfully from the dazzling sunshine, and listening to the pealing of the bells.

They were plain enough from Lislehurst Church across the Park, but she could distinguish, mingling with these, the more distant peal from Loam, and even, she thought, Marston’s little tinkling duet from its two cracked bells, which were being pulled with a goodwill that went far to atone for their lack of music.

The glory of “leafy June,” that queen of months, was upon the tall trees of the Park, among which presently the girl went wandering. How wonderful a world it was to-day! She felt as though she wanted to drink in the beauty around her.

The sunshine came flickering through the trees, making a chequer of light and shade upon the grassy path before her; in front the softly dappled deer were feeding peacefully, undisturbed by her approach.

“Pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang!” went the bells, and Sydney smiled in sympathy with that wonderful abandonment of joy which only bells can give.

The girl made a charming picture as she stood there on the soft grass, with the mighty trees she loved so well towering in their grandeur overhead, and the sunshine flickering through the leaves upon her white gown and sweet face.

She was good to look upon indeed in her dainty gown, with a great bunch of yellow roses at her belt, and that flush upon her cheek and sun of gladness in her eyes. She might have stood for an embodiment of the sweet young summer which was making the world good to dwell in.

So at least thought a young man, who, catching through the trees a glimpse of her white dress, had left the road and cut across the Park toward her. As he came near his eyes were fixed upon her earnest face, raised to the glory of sight and sound above. She did not hear his footsteps till he was quite close to her; then she sprang to meet him with a low cry of delight.

Something new in his voice brought a sudden flush to the delicately tinted face. Her eyes fell before his eager ones.

“Come into the gardens,” she said, turning, and the two went wandering together in a strange silence over the cool turf of the bowling green where King Charles I. had once played at his favourite game with a loyal Lisle of old, a Sydney too.

The balmy, fragrant air was filled with the clang of bells; beyond the Park they were beginning to cut hay in the long meadows sloping upwards towards the grey-green downs. A great bush, covered with the little yellow roses Sydney wore, smiled up at the two who stood before it.

“They are very glad,” said Sydney, “and oh, Hugh, I wonder whether anybody on the whole estate is more glad than I am!”

And then Hugh turned and caught her hands and said, with an odd break in his voice, “Syd, are you really?”

“If you are, what must I be!” he cried. “My darling, you don’t know, you can’t know what this means to me!”

Later, as the two sat together on the grassy bank bordering the bowling green, the girl said, “Do you know, I think we ought to be grateful to St. Quentin for taking me away from home and all of you. It was very, very hard to give up my brother Hugh, but this is better!”

“Pang—pang-pang-pang—pang-pang-pang-pang!” went the bells, tripping one another up [289] in their haste to clang out the glad tidings of the birth of an heir male to the great St. Quentin title and estates.

But Sydney had come, in those few quiet minutes in the garden, into a far greater heritage than that of which the little heir’s birth had deprived her!

A tall figure with brown hair touched with grey about the temples was coming down the path towards the bowling green. Sydney sprang to her feet and went to meet him, Hugh following her closely.

Lord St. Quentin too was listening to the bells, with a smile upon the face that had nearly lost its cynical expression. “But I feel almost as if the little beggar were doing you an injury, Sydney,” he said, laying his hand upon the girl’s slight shoulder as she joined him.

“You are not to say that!” she cried. “Do you think there is any one more glad and happy than I am to-day? Oh, St. Quentin, if you only knew how glad I am to be disinherited!”

He looked down at her glowing face, then turned from hers to Hugh’s. The light of comprehension dawned in his eyes.

“Upon my word!” he exclaimed as sternly [290] as he could. “What mischief have you two been doing now?”

“Well,” Sydney said audaciously, looking up into his face, that she had grown so fond of, “you see, you forbade me to look upon Hugh as a brother any longer—and—and I always try to obey you.”

“When I heard at Donisbro’ this morning that she was safely out of the succession, I couldn’t wait,” Hugh said. “There was just time to catch the next train, and I caught it!”

The corners of St. Quentin’s mouth twitched, and after one or two attempts to look serious, he gave it up and laughed outright.

“You are a nice pair!” he said. “If it weren’t for the fact that Katharine is sure to be upon the side of true love, and that you, Sydney, always insist upon your own way, I’d play the stern guardian, and send Master Hugh to the right-about!”

“But of course you are not going to do anything so absolutely horrid,” Sydney said with confidence. “You’re going to take him in to see the baby.”

“It’s all the baby’s fault,” grumbled its father, when Hugh had been presented to the red-faced, crumpled, kicking object who was Lord Lisle. “I believe I bear him a grudge. [291] You would have made a first-rate landlord, Sydney!”

“I never should have made a marchioness,” she declared with much decision. “Ask Lady Frederica. And oh, Quin, don’t be cross, but be glad that I haven’t got to try!”

CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCLUSION

Katharine sided with the lovers, as her husband had foretold, and he withdrew his opposition.

“Only, how do you intend to live?” he enquired one day of Sydney, as she sat nursing the little heir upon her knee.

“We are going to wait, of course,” she explained, “till Hugh is earning rather more, and in the meantime I am going to be so busy. I shall learn cooking and housekeeping and everything useful I can think of, and then it won’t matter if Hugh and I are not so very rich at first, will it?”

“H—m,” said St. Quentin. “You’re right about not being in a hurry. Katharine and I can’t do without you yet. But, you ridiculous little goose! has it never struck you that there are such things as wedding presents—and as marriage settlements? Look here, old Lorry wants to retire, if he can get a good offer for [293] his practice. It’s a first-rate one, you know, and it appears your Hugh won golden opinions here at the time of the fever. Lorry thinks if he were to come down and work in with him a little, the youngster would be received with enthusiasm by the patients when he himself cuts the concern. If your Hugh likes the notion, I’ll buy the practice for him and set you up in Lorry’s house, which you can have rent free, of course. How would that suit you as a wedding present? You see, old Lorry means to retire on Donisbro’, where some of his own people hang out.

“It’s a nice enough house and handy to the Castle, which is fortunate; for even if Katharine and I would allow you to leave Lislehurst, my tenants wouldn’t. So if this plan suits you and your Hugh, you can go on with your work-parties and soup-kitchens and all the rest of it, and you and Katharine together see what you can do towards turning me into a model landlord. What do you say to that scheme, eh?”

“Hugh come here, and he and I live here for always!” Sydney cried. “Oh, St. Quentin, you don’t mean it?”

“Like it!” cried Sydney. “Why, the part of being married that I minded was the leaving you!”

Mrs. Chichester was there, seeming to grow visibly younger in the freedom from household cares, and rapidly finding a congenial spirit in Katharine, and Dolly, very happy to be with Sydney again, and Fred and Prissie, who in spite of some natural disappointment at finding no merry-go-rounds in St. Quentin’s Park, managed to enjoy themselves exceedingly, with the ecstatic joy of London children in the country.

And Lord Braemuir was there, burly and good-natured as ever, and most hearty in his congratulations both to Hugh and St. Quentin, and Mr. Fenton, absolutely beaming, and looking with a nervous interest at the baby, whom he liked very much, he explained, “at a distance.”

And Hugh was there, with Dr. Lorry, whose door already bore the brass inscription,

And Mr. Seaton was there, looking as [295] though all his cares had rolled away with the coming of the bright-faced bride on his arm, who made all the better housekeeper, he used to say proudly, for knowing as much Greek as he did himself.

And Pauly was there, but in no very sociable frame of mind, for he ignored everyone but Freddie, the length of whose nine-year-old legs filled him with awe and admiration. He refused to even look at the baby, but kept his round eyes fixed on Freddie, who patronised him in a way that amused the looker-on considerably.

Both boys, however, managed to do full justice to the splendid christening cake, on which Mrs. Fewkes had expended her utmost pains and skill. Indeed, Pauly very decidedly made up for his abstinence upon that celebrated fifth birthday.

And old Mr. Hudder was there, rather prosy but extremely happy, and never more so than when St. Quentin asked his “oldest tenant” to propose the health of the son and heir.

“My Lord, Your Ladyship, and Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, “man and boy I’ve held my farm under the Marquesses of St. Quentin. They’ve been good landlords to me, and I’ve been a good tenant to them. My [296] Lord, Your Ladyship, Ladies and Gentlemen, we didn’t look to see this happy day. All of us standing here have got a lot to thank God for. He has raised up his lordship and given us the fine strong heir as we’re thanking Him for to-day. I’ll not deny but that we looked forward to seeing the young lady that we’ve learned to love reign over us, but it seems she’s satisfied with the woman’s kingdom that is hers to-day. God bless her! and give her and her husband that is to be every happiness, and the same to you, My Lord and Your Ladyship. And in the name of your lordships’ tenants, I wish a long and happy life, and all prosperity, to Sidney, Lord Lisle.”

That was indeed a happy day, but there was one to come that was even happier—the day on which Sydney Lisle laid down her maiden name and became, what she had always felt herself, a Chichester.

Lord St. Quentin gave the bride away. “A thing which I am bound to do considering it was I who took her from you,” he said, laughing.

He and Hugh were good friends by this time, all the better perhaps for having begun, [297] as the famous Mrs. Malaprop would say, with “a little aversion,” and Hugh did not misunderstand the marquess when he said—“Sydney used to annoy me by insisting upon being three-parts Chichester when I wished her to be all Lisle: now it is my turn to insist that she does not quite forget the Lisle side, when she is a Chichester by right.”

“But we are all one family now, aren’t we, Quin?” Sydney said softly, and her cousin did not contradict the statement.

It was on a perfect September day, with that deeper blue in the clear sky and wonderful freshness in the air which summer’s end brings with it, that Sydney was married.

As on that first morning at the Castle long ago, she rose before the rest of the household, and went out into the Park, where diamond dew lay thick and the hedges sparkled with jewelled cobwebs.

She would not call Dolly to come with her: she wanted for a little while upon this happy morning to be the lonely Sydney again.

But there was little to recall that first walk, as she stood on the marble steps of the Castle and looked into the glory of September sunshine glittering around her.

She went through the Park, making for the [298] gap in the hedge she knew so well, and drinking in the beauty which was so atune with her heart to-day—the dark-foliaged trees, the upland fields, some bare, some covered still with corn-sheaves, stacked in hiles , as the Blankshire people called them—the glitter of dew at her feet, where every tiny blade of grass seemed jewelled in the sunshine.

She could not resist one peep through the mullioned windows of the quaint, dark, comfortable, Queen Anne house, furnished throughout by loving hands to suit the girl’s taste. The fittings from her luxurious rooms in the Castle had gone with her to this new home by St. Quentin’s wish, and the beautiful plate on the sideboard spoke eloquently enough of the feeling among the tenantry of the estate for “our young lady.”

Mackintosh had filled the conservatory with his choicest flowers, and Bessie and the pair of ponies already inhabited the roomy stables. This was to be her home and Hugh’s. Her home and Hugh’s!—how good it sounded!

How different all was from that first walk, when the new life had appeared so strange and lonely, and home so terribly far away! [299] Had it ever seemed possible then that she would come to love Lislehurst so well, could come to be as happy there as she was to-day?

At the gap where they had first met Pauly was waiting, with a basket and a broad smile of satisfaction on his round chubby face.

“Going to get mushrooms,” he explained, submitting to her kiss. “Muvver’s coming, and daddy, and dear Dr. Hugh. Come too!”

“Not this morning, Pauly dear,” said Sydney, “but another morning we will all go out together, won’t we, and have a good time? Now good-bye, and don’t forget to come and help us eat the wedding cake.”

“Do I hear you pressing wedding cake on Pauly?” observed Pauly’s father, appearing at the moment, also armed with a mighty basket. “Please don’t, for I assure you it is quite unnecessary. He never needs much pressing, do you, Pauly? Miss Lisle, won’t you come into the Vicarage and have some milk or something, in memory of that first visit that you paid us?”

“When I missed breakfast altogether, and had such a scolding from Lady Frederica for paying calls upon my own account,” Sydney said, laughing. “No, not this morning, thank you, Mr. Seaton: I must hurry home.”

“You’re not afraid of a scolding now?” the Vicar asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think Katharine ever learned the way to scold, and St. Quentin has forgotten it.”

And then she put her hand on the Vicar’s arm, as he held the gate open for her.

“Do you remember our talk on that first morning that we met, and how you told me there was work for everyone to do, if they would look for it? I don’t suppose you know how much that helped me.”

“Thank you,” said the Vicar with a smile, “that is a thing it does one good to hear. But it is not everyone who looks to such good purpose as you did.”

And, as Sydney walked rapidly away, he looked after her, thinking of the great results which had followed on the girl’s simple straightforward performance of that work she found to do.

He thought of the enormous difference to be seen in the villages all over the estate; of their owner, honestly striving to do his best for the people whose comfort was committed to his charge; of the happy marriage brought about by her means, and he did not wonder at the hearty cheers with which the bride [301] was received, as she came down the crimson-covered churchyard path upon her cousin’s arm.

Sydney flushed with pleasure: it was very pleasant to feel herself surrounded by so much affection and goodwill.

“I am so very glad it is not ‘good-bye’ to this home,” she whispered to St. Quentin; and he smiled, well pleased.

She had her own way about the wedding festivities, and all the tenants, rich and poor alike, were feasted in the Castle grounds.

It was a day long remembered through the county, and any doubt the tenants may have felt as to Sydney’s perfect pleasure in her dispossession were quite swept away then by the sight of her radiant face.

“Our young lady,” she would be always to the Lislehurst people, but they plainly saw that she was happy in the humbler path her feet were to tread.

“She looked for all the world like a bit of spring and sunshine,” Mrs. Sawyer used to say, in talking of that happy wedding day, “and Dr. Hugh, his face matched hers for gladness, as it should. God bless ’em both!”

It was a bewilderingly happy day, from the moment that Sydney put her hand into Hugh’s [302] strong one, where she could so safely trust her future, to that in which Pauly, after some loudly whispered directions from old Mr. Hudder, marched forward, and laid in Sydney’s hand the lovely little gold watch, with which she had parted for the sake of her poorer neighbours. “For you,” he said briefly.

“A testimony of respectful affection from his lordship’s tenantry in Lislehurst to their young lady,” Mr. Hudder amended.

I think Sydney nearly cried as she kissed the little boy and held out her hand to Mr. Hudder.

But perhaps the very best moment in the whole long happy day was that in which Sydney Chichester was able to throw her arms about the neck of father and mother, and call herself “their little girl” again.

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CHAP.		PAGE
I.	A WONDERFUL GUINEA	7
II.	HER OWN PEOPLE	15
III.	UPROOTED	27
IV.	THE FIRST NIGHT	40
V.	THE FIRST MORNING	53
VI.	LORD ST. QUENTIN	67
VII.	MISS MORRELL	78
VIII.	ACCOMPLISHMENTS	86
IX.	THE HEIRESS-APPARENT	97
X.	A MEETING	105
XI.	ON THE CHURCH TOWER	117
XII.	MERRY CHRISTMAS	136
XIII.	HUGH’S BATTLE	152
XIV.	AT THE DEANERY	161
XV.	LITTLE THINGS	170
XVI.	A PROPOSAL	181
[6] XVII.	ST. QUENTIN’S STORY	197
XVIII.	THE CHAIN BROKEN	205
XIX.	PAULY’S BIRTHDAY	212
XX.	HUGH TO THE RESCUE	220
XXI.	FEVER-STRICKEN	231
XXII.	GIVEN BACK	245
XXIII.	WHAT HUGH TOLD	251
XXIV.	THE WAITING OF TWO	261
XXV.	IN THE DEANERY GARDEN	270
XXVI.	A HOME-COMING	279
XXVII.	DESDICHADO	287
XXVIII.	CONCLUSION	294