Sir Sykes had never been one of those who wear their hearts, metaphorically, on their sleeves; he told those around him as much as he wished them to know, and no more. There was quite a flutter of pleasurable excitement among the Denzil girls at the prospect of a new member of the household, a new face at Carbery. They were sorry for this poor Miss Willis, sorrier for her by far than for the many orphans whose bereavement is notified to us every day by a grim list of deaths dryly chronicled in the newspaper. And they felt doubly disposed to welcome her and be good to her in that she was lonely and sad, and that her presence would introduce a new element into Carbery. They made no sacrifice in giving a cheerful acquiescence to their father’s suggestion that his ward should be received beneath his roof. In such a house the maintenance of an extra inmate was of no moment at all. But had Sir Sykes been living in furnished lodgings, and forced to look twice at half-a-crown, those honest girls would still not have grudged a share of their hashed mutton and scanty house-room to the daughter of an old friend of their father’s. ‘I don’t think, sir, that I remember to have heard you mention the Major’s name,’ said Jasper, stolidly buttering his toast, but furtively eyeing his father from beneath his pale eyelashes. ‘I think you have heard it,’ answered Sir Sykes, with a self-possession that all but staggered Jasper’s unbelief. ‘We were quartered together for years at Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lahore. There were Reynolds and L’Estrange, and Moreton who is living yet, and this poor fellow Willis; the old set, with whom I was intimate. I don’t often bore listeners who have never been in India, with the details of my eastern experiences, else I think that the name of Major‒or Captain‒George Willis would be tolerably familiar here.’ That the girls, in their newly awakened interest, should ask questions was but natural. But their father had not very much beyond the substance of his original announcement to communicate. He had, he said, but a vague recollection of Mrs Willis, his friend’s wife, a bride when Sir Sykes returned to Europe, and who had now been dead for some years. She was a quiet domestic little person, from Wales or Ireland, the baronet did not know which; and she had some pittance of annual income, which would no doubt go to her child at the husband’s decease. Major Willis had no private means, at least so Sir Sykes thought. There was a London lawyer, however, who knew all about the financial affairs of the orphan, and who would of course render a proper statement to the baronet’s solicitors. Miss Willis would be entitled, as the child of an Indian officer, to no pension, being, as Sir Sykes understood, over the age of twenty-one; but of that again he was not sure, not being certain of the exact age of his friend’s daughter. She had no very near relatives, and had never, to Sir Sykes’s knowledge, been in England before.