Transcriber’s Note: Some words at the bottom of page 8 were omitted
from the original printing and have been filled in by comparison with
another edition of the book, published by S. W. Partridge & Co. in
London c. 1905:
“Sydney! Sydney!” Mildred said reprovingly, “don’t you [remember what
mother was] saying to you only yesterday?
That other edition also gave the name of the illustrator, Wal Paget.
SYDNEY LISLE
_THE HEIRESS OF ST. QUENTIN_
[Illustration: “She went through the park.”
(Page 297)]
SYDNEY LISLE
THE HEIRESS OF ST. QUENTIN
BY
DOROTHEA MOORE
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER
610 SOUTH WASHINGTON SQUARE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A WONDERFUL GUINEA 7
II. HER OWN PEOPLE 15
III. UPROOTED 27
IV. THE FIRST NIGHT 40
V. THE FIRST MORNING 53
VI. LORD ST. QUENTIN 67
VII. MISS MORRELL 78
VIII. ACCOMPLISHMENTS 86
IX. THE HEIRESS-APPARENT 97
X. A MEETING 105
XI. ON THE CHURCH TOWER 117
XII. MERRY CHRISTMAS 136
XIII. HUGH’S BATTLE 152
XIV. AT THE DEANERY 161
XV. LITTLE THINGS 170
XVI. A PROPOSAL 181
XVII. ST. QUENTIN’S STORY 197
XVIII. THE CHAIN BROKEN 205
XIX. PAULY’S BIRTHDAY 212
XX. HUGH TO THE RESCUE 220
XXI. FEVER-STRICKEN 231
XXII. GIVEN BACK 245
XXIII. WHAT HUGH TOLD 251
XXIV. THE WAITING OF TWO 261
XXV. IN THE DEANERY GARDEN 270
XXVI. A HOME-COMING 279
XXVII. DESDICHADO 287
XXVIII. CONCLUSION 294
SYDNEY LISLE
CHAPTER I
A WONDERFUL GUINEA
A rainy November afternoon was drawing to its close. The sun had set in
a haze of fog, to which it gave a fleeting warmth of colour. The street
lamps were lit, and chinks of light showed here and there through the
shuttered windows of the tall, dingy houses in a dull old square not far
from Euston Station.
Yes, chinks of light were coming from almost every house, casting little
gleams of brightness on to the wet pavements and rusty iron bars guarding
the areas; but from one, the last in the square, considerably more was to
be seen.
Uncertain blobs of light, now broad, now narrow, from the windows of
the dining-room, suggested that the curtains were being drawn back
impatiently every few minutes, that someone might look out into the
uninviting darkness; and at least three times in one half-hour a broad
blaze streaming out into the night assured the passers-by that the hall
door of Number 20 had been opened wide, despite the fog and rain.
If they had paused at such a moment they might have seen a slender
figure, with brown hair blown away from her bright face, and eager eyes
that searched the familiar square, regardless of the cold, until a call
from within made her slowly close the door and return into the brightness
that looked doubly bright after the darkness without.
“Father and Hugh won’t come any the quicker because you send a draught
right through the house, dear!” a pleasant-looking girl of two or
three-and-twenty remarked, as Sydney came dancing and singing into the
shabby school-room after her third unsuccessful journey to the door;
“they are hardly ever in before half-past five, you know.”
“It feels like half-past six, at least!” cried Sydney. “Oh, dear! oh,
dear! I’ve never known half-past five so _awfully_ long in coming!”
“Sydney! Sydney!” Mildred said reprovingly, “don’t you remember what
mother was saying to you only yesterday? You really must give up slang
and schoolgirl ways, now you are going to be eighteen next month, and to
put your hair up, and leave off doing proper lessons and——”
“And become a real, celebrated authoress!” shouted Tom, who was
despatching bread and butter at the table with a highly satisfactory
appetite. “You’ll have to mind your shaky grammar now, Syd.”
“Of course I shan’t be a celebrated authoress quite at once,” said Sydney
modestly. “I believe you are usually rather more grown up than eighteen
first, and have a little more experience. But it makes one feel ever so
much older when one is really going to be in print.”
“And when you’ve earned a whole guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!”
little Prissie contributed in an absolutely awestruck voice.
“Read us the letter again, Syd,” Hal demanded, stretching out his long
legs to the cheerful blaze. “Go ahead; I really don’t think I took it all
in.”
And Sydney, nothing loth, produced that wonderful letter, which had
come in quite an ordinary way by the four o’clock post that afternoon,
together with an advertisement about a dairy-farm for mother, and an
uninteresting-looking envelope for father, with “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the
back.
The outside of _her_ letter was quite ordinary-looking too, Sydney had
thought, when Fred and Prissie had almost torn the envelope in half, in
their anxiety each to have the pleasure of bringing it upstairs to her.
Just a narrow envelope, with something stamped upon the back, and her
name in very scrawly hand-writing—“Miss Sydney Lisle.”
And then, when she had turned it over several times, and all the
Chichester children who were in had had a look at it, and tried to guess
what the raised and twisted letters on the back might mean, Sydney had
opened it.
And there was a typed letter, and inside the letter a cheque for a
guinea—actually a guinea, the largest sum Sydney had ever owned in the
course of her seventeen years! She never will forget the wonder and
delight of that moment!
“It’s a guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!” she had told the
wildly-excited Madge and Fred and Prissie. “The Editor of _Our Girls_ has
sent it to me. He is going to print my story in the next week’s issue,
and he calls me ‘Madam’!”
This was the astounding news which was told afresh to every member of
the Chichester family as he or she set foot inside the door, and which
made the hands of the school-room clock stand still to Sydney, as she
waited for Dr. Chichester and Hugh to come in from the hospital and hear
it.
How surprised father would be, and what a lovely new fountain pen she
would buy for him! And Hugh—Hugh was always so specially pleased when
anything nice happened to Sydney! She would get Hugh to take her out and
help her to choose presents for everyone out of that wonderful guinea,
which seemed as inexhaustible as Fortunatus’s purse.
Father and mother (_what_ a present mother should have!), and
Mildred—Mildred wanted a new pair of gloves; she should have suède, the
very best. And Hal and Dolly and Tom—Tom should have the bicycle-lamp he
was longing for, in spite of his remark about her grammar; and Madge and
Ronald and dear little Freddie and Prissie, oh, what a doll she would get
for Prissie! with real eyelashes and hair that you could brush! And old
nurse must have a present, too, and Susan the cook. And Hugh—Hugh should
have the very best present of anybody’s, after mother.
So absorbed was she in these thoughts that she never heard the front
door open and the steps, which she had been waiting for so long, come
down the passage to the school-room.
The watched pot had boiled the minute that she took her eyes from it:
Hugh Chichester was standing in the doorway looking at her.
“Oh, Hugh!” She was at his side in a moment, and pouring out the great
news in words that would hardly come fast enough to please her.
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down—such a long way he
had to look from his six feet two inches—at her glowing face.
“Why, Syd,” he said, “that’s first-rate, isn’t it? Well done!”
“Three cheers for Miss Lisle, the celebrated authoress!” yelled Tom,
rising from his chair and waving his tea-cup. The toast was received with
enthusiasm.
“Only I wish it were ‘Miss Chichester,’” said Ronald; “it’s so silly for
old Syd to have a different name!”
“Oh, well, she can’t help that,” Tom contributed; “and her father and
mother gave her to us, so it’s just the same.”
“Yes, she’s ours right enough,” said Hugh, putting his arm round his
“little sister,” as Sydney Lisle would have called herself.
And then, quite suddenly, Dr. Chichester’s voice was heard calling
“Sydney! Sydney!”
“There’s father calling; mother must have told him!” Sydney cried, and,
gathering together her precious cheque and letter, she rushed out like a
whirlwind.
“The pater is in the drawing-room, Syd,” Hugh called after her; “he just
took up his letters and went straight in there to mother,” he added, for
the others’ benefit. Sydney was already out of hearing, and only echoes
of her fresh young voice came floating back to them, as she ran down the
long back passage and up the stairs through the hall to the drawing-room.
“Merrily! merrily shall I live now! Merrily! merrily!”
Mildred stooped to pick up the mending-basket which Sydney’s energetic
movements had swept off her knee. “I wonder whether Sydney ever will grow
up!” she said.
“Well, she’s right enough as she is,” said Hugh, at last beginning on his
long-delayed tea.
Sydney’s merry voice was hushed as she came into the drawing-room, for
mother did not like boisterous ways, and father might be tired. But,
though her feet moved soberly, her eyes were dancing as she held out the
precious letter to the doctor, standing by the window.
He turned, and Sydney suddenly forgot the guinea.
What made him look so old and strange? And surely mother’s head was bent
down low above her work to hide her tears! Sydney stopped short, with an
exclamation of dismay.
Father grasped a letter in a hand that shook. Vaguely she saw that the
crumpled envelope had “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the back. It was the letter
which had come with hers at four o’clock that afternoon!
The hall clock heralded the striking of six by a variety of strange
wheezing sounds: when it had slowly tinged away the six strokes, father
spoke.