‘My mother and sisters will take care of you, I know,’ he said, as he supported her slow steps through the park, where the fog, so dense upon the frowning hills above, only floated in fitful wreaths. The house was reached, and great was the surprise of those within when Lord Harrogate appeared with Ethel, pale, patient, exhausted, but beautiful still, her dark hair and her dress dripping with wet, leaning on his strong arm. The Countess was kind; and her daughters, beautiful golden-haired Lady Gladys, honest-eyed earnest Lady Maud, even Lady Alice, a clever child of twelve, were still more kind. A bright wood-fire was soon blazing in what was called the Yellow Room; and Ethel, seated as near to the crackling logs as her chair could be placed, and propped up with cushions, was able to dry her wet tresses and drenched garments; while Lord Harrogate’s sisters, and Lady Maud in especial, pressed her to partake of tea and other refreshments, and spoke soothingly to her, and were very full of tender womanly sympathy. Lady Maud, the Earl’s second daughter, knew the new school-mistress better than did the others, and liked her. She was herself a constant visitor at the school-house, and had heard many and many an urchin stammer through his or her lessons there, and could therefore the better appreciate the motive which had led Ethel into her late danger, through a natural wish to comfort little Lenny on his bed of fever. Warmth, and that kindliness of manner which women shew more than we do, did much towards bringing Ethel back from that death-in-life which excessive fatigue and chill tend to produce; and when the carriage was, in spite of her remonstrance, ‘ordered round,’ to convey her home to the school, she had strength enough to walk unaided to the door. Lord Harrogate had disappeared. The Earl had not as yet returned from some meeting of magistrates. ‘I will come down to see you, Miss Gray, to-morrow, if I can,’ said Lady Maud, as the carriage drove off. CHAPTER VI.‒SIR SYKES MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT. ‘Lucy, my dear, and Blanche too, I want to know how you would like to receive here, at Carbery, a young lady who is a total stranger to all of us; but who, if she comes at all, comes with a distinct understanding that this house, until she marries, is her home. I ask you this, my dears, because I have received a letter’‒and the baronet pointed to a black-bordered envelope that lay, with others, beside his plate‒‘inclosing one penned, long ago, by a hand which can write no more. George Willis‒Major, when he died, in the Indian army‒was one of my earliest and truest friends. He is dead now. He left behind him this one girl, his only and motherless child, and‒and he begs me, in a letter, indorsed “After my death to be forwarded to Sir Sykes Denzil,” to become the guardian of this‒this poor orphaned thing. How do you say, my girls? Shall we have her here at Carbery, or not?’