ad hitherto been quite
unresponsive to her caresses, put out his right hand and stroked the
trembling fingers that rested on his left arm. He was leaning against
the old oak table, where his father's books and papers had stood for so
many years; and some remembrances of bygone days when he and Lettice, as
boy and girl, sat together with their grammars and lexicons at that very
place, occurred a little dimly to his mind. But what was a dim memory to
him was very clear and distinct to Lettice.

"Oh, Sydney, do you remember how we used to work here with father?" she
broke out. "How many hours we spent here together--reading the same
books, thinking the same thoughts--and now we seem so divided, so very
far apart! You have not quite forgotten those old days, have you?"

"No, I have not forgotten them," said Sydney, in a rather unsteady
voice. Poor Lettice! She had counted for very little in his life for the
last few years, and yet, as she reminded him, what companions they had
been before he went to Cambridge! A suddenly roused instinct of
compassion and protection caused him to put his arm round her and to
speak with unusual tenderness.

"I won't forget those old times, Lettice. Perhaps we shall be able to
see more of each other by and bye than we have done lately. You have
been a good girl, never wanting any change or amusement all these years;
but I'll do my best to look after you now."

"I began to think you did not care for any of us, Sydney."

"Nonsense," said Sydney, and he kissed her forehead affectionately
before he left the study, where, indeed, he felt that he had stayed a
little too long, and given Lettice an unusual advantage over him. He was
not destitute of natural affections, but they had so long been obscured
by the mists of selfishness that he found it difficult to let them
appear--and more difficult with his sister than with his mother. Lettice
seemed to him to exact too much, to be too intense in feeling, too
critical in observation. He was fond of her, but she was not at all his
ideal woman--if he had one. Sydney's preference was for what he called
"a womanly woman": not one who knew Greek.

He made a brave and manly effort to wind up his father's affairs and pay
his outstanding debts. He was so far stirred out of himself that it
hardly occurred to his mind that a slur would be left on him if these
debts were left unpaid: his strongest motive just now was the sense of
right and wrong, and he knew,