of England notes, "I think this will pay you for the
trouble you have had with the boy during the last ten years. No
thanks--you have earned the money."

She moved to the door, made a slight, proud gesture with her gloved
hand, in farewell; took a last look at the golden-haired, blue-eyed,
handsome boy, and was gone. A moment later, and her cab rattled out of
the murky street, and the trio were alone staring at one another, and at
the bulky roll of notes.

"I should think it was a dream only for this," murmured old Martha,
looking at the roll with glistening eyes.

"A great lady--a great lady, surely. Guy, I shouldn't wander if that was
your mother."

CHAPTER VII.

COLONEL JOCYLN.

Five miles away from Thetford Towers, where the multitudinous waves
leaped and glistened all day in the sunlight, as if a glitter with
diamonds, stood Jocyln Hall. An imposing structure of red brick, not yet
one hundred years old, with sloping meadows spreading away into the blue
horizon, and densely wooded plantations down to the wide sea.

Colonel Jocyln, the lord of these swelling meadows and miles of
woodland, where the red deer disported in the green arcades, was absent
in India, and had been for the past nine years. They were an old family,
the Jocylns, as old as any in Devon, with a pride that bore no
proportion to their purse, until the present Jocyln had, all at once,
become a millionaire. A penniless young lieutenant in a cavalry
regiment, quartered somewhere in Ireland, with a handsome face and
dashing manners, he had captivated, at first sight, a wild, young Irish
heiress of fabulous wealth and beauty. It was a love match on her
side--nobody knew exactly what it was on his; but they made a moonlight
flitting of it, for the lady's friends were grievously wroth. Lieutenant
Jocyln liked his profession for its own sake, and took his Irish bride
to India, and there an heiress and only child was born to him. The
climate disagreed with the young wife--she sickened and died; but the
young officer and his baby-girl remained in India. In the fulness of
time he became Colonel Jocyln; and one day electrified his housekeeper
by a letter announcing his intention of returning to England with his
little daughter Aileen "for good."

That same month of December, which took Lady Thetford on that mysterious
London journey, brought this letter from Calcutta. Five months after,
when the May primroses and hyacinths were all abloom in