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.

[24]

And now, without warning, the blow had fallen.

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.”

[25]

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.

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