companion for
you."

"He's not to be blamed," Lord Arranmore said. "From his point of view I
have been the most scandalous parent upon this earth." Lady Caroom
sighed.

"Do you know," she said, "that he and Sybil were very friendly?

"I noticed it," he answered.

"She has asked about him once or twice since we got back to town, and
when she reads about the starting of this new work of his at Stepney she
will certainly write to him."

"You mean--"

"I mean that she has sent Sydney to the right-about this time in earnest.
She is a queer girl, reticent in a way, although she seems such a
chatterbox, and I am sure she thinks about him."

Lord Arranmore laughed a little hardly.

"Well," he said, "I am the last person to be consulted about anything of
this sort. If he keeps up his present attitude and declines to receive
anything from me, his income until my death will be only two or three
thousand a year. He might marry on that down in Stepney, but not in
this part of the world.''

"Sybil has nine hundred a year," Lady Caroom said, "but it would not be
a matter of money at all. I should not allow Sybil to marry any one
concerning whose position in the world there was the least mystery.
She might marry Lord Kingston of Ross, but never Mr. Kingston Brooks."

"Has--Mr. Brooks given any special signs of devotion?" Lord Arranmore
asked.

"Not since they were at Enton. I dare say he has never even thought of
her since. Still, it was a contingency which occurred to me."

"He is a young man of excellent principles," Lord Arranmore said, dryly,
"taking life as seriously as you please, and I should imagine is too
well balanced to make anything but a very safe husband. If he comes to
me, if he will accept it without coming to me even, he can have another
ten thousand a year and Enton."

"You are generous," she murmured.

"Generous! My houses and my money are a weariness to me. I cannot live
in the former, and I cannot spend the latter. I am a man really of
simple tastes. Besides, there is no glory now in spending money. One
can so easily be outdone by one's grocer, or one of those marvellous
Americans."

"Yet I thought I read of you last week as giving nine hundred pounds for
some unknown tapestry at Christie's."

"But that is not extravagance," he protested. "That is not even
spending money. It is exchanging one investment for another. The
purple colouring of that tapestry is marvellous. The next generation
wil