Everything had been made ready for the little strangers. There were
fires blazing in two large bedrooms overhead--rooms with a door of
communication. In one there were still the two little white beds in
which Lilian and Sibyl had slept when they were children; poor Lilian,
whose bed was in the English cemetery at Florence, under a white marble
monument erected by her sorrowing husband, and whose sorrowing husband
had taken to himself a second wife five years ago. Every one knew where
Lilian was lying, but no one at Penlyon Castle knew where Sibyl's head
had found rest. All that people knew about the disobedient daughter was
that her husband had died within three or four years of her marriage,
worn to death in some foreign mission. Of his luckless widow no one at
Penlyon had heard anything, but it was surmised that her father made her
an allowance. He could hardly let his only daughter starve, people said,
however badly she might have treated him. Lady Lurgrave's early death
had been a crushing blow to his love and to his pride. She had died
childless.
* * * * *
Sir John had heard the carriage stop, and the opening of the hall door;
and although he pretended to go on reading his paper by the lamp placed
close at his elbow, the pretense was a poor one, and anybody might have
seen that he was listening with all his might.
The footman had opened the hall door as the wheels drew near; it was
wide open when the carriage stopped. The red light from the hall fire
streamed out upon the evening gray, and three little silvery voices were
heard exclaiming:--
"Oh, what a pretty house!"
"Oh, what a big house!"