ster Felicia. I was educated abroad. It was one of my
father's fancies that I should see many lands, that I should study men
and women before settling down to my right position in the world; so
that I knew but little of my sister Felicia. She was a child when I left
home--the tragedy of her life had happened before I returned."

Again a great rush of color came over the pale, aristocratic face.

"I must apologize, Miss Hastings, for troubling you with these details,
but unless you understand them you will not understand my niece. I
cannot tell you how it happened, but it did so happen that while I was
away my sister disgraced herself; she left home with a French artist,
whom Sir Hildebert had engaged to renovate some choice and costly
pictures at Darrell Court. How it came about I cannot say--perhaps there
were excuses for her. She may have found home very dull--my father was
harsh and cold, and her mother was dead. It may be that when the young
artist told her of warm love in sunny lands she was tempted, poor child,
to leave the paternal roof.

"My father's wrath was terrible; he pursued Julian L'Estrange with
unrelenting fury. I believe the man would have been a successful artist
but for my father, who had vowed to ruin him, and who never rested until
he had done so--until he had reduced him to direst poverty--and then my
sister appealed for help, and my father refused to grant it. He would
not allow her name to be mentioned among us; her portrait was destroyed;
everything belonging to her was sent away from Darrell Court.

"When I returned--in an interview that I shall never forget--my father
threatened me not only with disinheritance, but with his curse, if I
made any attempt to hold the least communication with my sister. I do
not know that I should have obeyed him if I could have found her, but I
did not even know what part of the world she was in. She died, poor
girl, and I have no doubt that her death was greatly hastened by
privation. My father told me of her death, also that she had left one
daughter; he did more--he wrote to Julian L'Estrange, and offered to
adopt his daughter on the one condition that he would consent never to
see her or hold the least communication with her.

"The reply was, as you may imagine, a firm refusal and a fierce
denunciation. In the same letter came a note, written in a large,
childish hand:

"'I love my papa, and I do not love you. I will not come to live with
you. You are