[26]

[26]

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.”

[27]

[27]

CHAPTER III UPROOTED

UPROOTED

The time was rather after five o’clock on a dark afternoon a week later.

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.

[28]

[28]

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, 

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