eleur.

Gerard quite started when he heard the name, which he remembered quite
well. Harry said that Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur was grave and quiet, he and
Lindsay felt rather afraid of him, but they would know better what sort
of person he was when they had spent the holidays with him.

'We are to go to his house, or at least to a house he has got in Devon,
near the sea-side, next August,' he told Gerard, and he promised that he
would ask his guardian if he had any relation called Mrs. Wingfield, and
if he found it was the same, he would tell him what Gerard had said, and
how all these years she had been hoping to hear from him. For granny had
told Gerard almost as much as she had told me of how strange it was that
'Cosmo' never wrote.

Well now you--by 'you' of course I mean whoever reads this story, if
ever any one does--you begin to see how it came about. Harry Vandeleur
_did_ tell his guardian about us, or about grandmamma, and found out
that she _was_ his aunt. Mr. Vandeleur was very much startled, Harry
said, to hear about how very differently she was living now, and he
wrote down the address and told Harry he would make further enquiries.

That was all Harry knew, for Mr. Vandeleur was very reserved, and Harry
and Lindsay did not feel as if they knew him any better after the
holidays than before. Mrs. Vandeleur was very ill, though they thought
she would have liked to be kind; they were always being told not to make
a noise, and so they stayed out-of-doors as much as they could. It was
rather dull (_very_ dull, I should think), and they hoped they would not
spend their next holidays there; they would almost rather stay at
school.

It was August or September when Mr. Vandeleur heard about grandmamma. He
did not at once write to her; he made enquiries of the lawyer who had
for many years managed, grandpapa's and papa's affairs, and he found it
was only too true, that granny was _very_ badly off. But even then he
did not write immediately, for Mrs. Vandeleur got worse and for a little
while they were afraid she was going to die.

He told granny this in his letter, but went on to say that Mrs.
Vandeleur was better, and the doctors hoped she might be moved home to
their house in London after the new year. In the meantime he was in
great difficulty what to do, he had to be in London a good deal, and it
was a pity to shut up the house, as they had made it all very nice, and
they had good servants. And even when Mrs. Van