“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!”

It was in his arms that Lord Francis died three days later.

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.

[23]

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 

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