"I have heard that you and your little one have made your home in Capri. Well, I am glad to think of you in that sweet setting and perhaps after the stormy turbulence of your young life, you may find your widowhood a period of peace and rest. I should not think you were troubled with superfluous cash, so will you let me defray the cost of my god-daughter's education? I should like to see her one day. I am a lonely man with few kith or kin, as you know, and I want to make her acquaintance. Send her over to me if you ever want to get rid of her. If she is anything like the wild slip of girl her mother was, she will enliven my solitude, and at my death she will benefit. "Your never-forgetting cousin, "CHARLES HOLT." Thorold read this through more than once. Then he looked up. "Did Mrs. Brendon answer this letter?" "No, she told me she was not going to part with her child; and if she responded to Mr. Holt's advances, he would expect her to marry him, and that she could never do." "Then, having made her choice, and keeping her child, why do you come to me and produce this letter? Mr. Holt left his money elsewhere. The child has lost her chance." The woman looked at him miserably. "What can I do?" she asked. "I haven't the money to keep her. She's too young to keep herself. She's just a child. And I came to see Mr. Charles Holt. I did not know he was dead." "Surely Mrs. Brendon left some money?" "She had a pension only, which stopped at her death. Colonel Brendon saved nothing. Mrs. Brendon and I used to help out with fine sewing. The nuns at the convent used to give us some to do." Thorold shrugged his shoulders. "I am not a rich man. I can't spare a separate income for this young girl. Why should I? She is no relation of mine." "A cousin's cousin," the stranger murmured. "If she had come over in Mr. Holt's lifetime, she would have been his heiress." "Where is she now?" asked Thorold abruptly. "Goodness only knows," was the unexpected answer. "Most likely rowing down the Thames, or going over to Paris in an airship, or wandering round Stonehenge in the dark—anywhere but where I left her, and where she ought to be—in quiet lodgings in the Euston Road. She's out to see England, she says, and she means to do it, though she's penniless." "Then the sooner you get back to her the better. Don't look so desperate. I'll think things over, and run up to town in a few days, and see you. Give me your address. If the girl is old enough to earn her own living, we may perhaps find a job for her. Girls find it easier to work now, than in the old days." "Thank you. If you don't help us, I don't know who will. I think I'll be getting back to the Rectory, and leave by the first train in the morning." He let her go, but his peace of mind was gone. He paced his room restlessly, and sleep forsook him that night. The next morning he rode over to a country house about ten miles away, and walked in unannounced.