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.

[50]

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?”

The old lawyer held the door open, and the two passed out to the drawing-room.

“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!”

And her grey and silver draperies swept out of the gold drawing-room.

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?

[51]

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.

He stood looking at her for a moment, and then rang the bell.

“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 

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