"Who is Miss Borlace?" asked Sidney, with interest, as she followed him into his study. "Is it some relative of yours?" Mr. Borlace sat down heavily in his big arm-chair, and shook his head in rather a helpless fashion. "My dear Sidney, I'm sadly afraid she is—sadly afraid." Sidney could not help smiling. "You seem quite bowled over. What has she done?" "I am shaken, and for once in my life I don't know how to act. I want a woman to advise me. Mrs. Lunn refuses to do it. She says it is not her place, but she will be the most affected by it—she and I together." "It is quite mysterious. Do begin at the beginning." "It began yesterday, but upon my word it seems like a year ago. I was nailing up my William Allen Richardson—the wind of these last few days has played havoc with it—and suddenly I heard a voice behind me: "'I believe I am speaking to my cousin.' "I turned and there she was! Her bicycle was leaning against the gate, and she told me she was taking a cycle tour through these parts, and thought she would look me up. I couldn't remember who she was at first, but she soon enlightened me. I asked her to stay to lunch, and then she stayed to tea, and she talked hard the whole afternoon, and in the end I offered her a bed for the night, and this morning we have had tears, and a burst of confidence, and she wants me to keep her here altogether, and, of course, it is very upsetting, for I have been a bachelor for so long that I prefer my own ways, and yet she seems to have some claim upon me. I don't know what to do. I wish you would go into the drawing-room and have a talk with her, and come back and tell me what you think of her." "She might resent my interference," said Sidney. "Oh, she isn't that sort. She is too anxious to be helped." So Sidney left the room. She expected to see some hysterical woman of middle age, so that it was rather a surprise to confront a radiant specimen of girlhood. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, whistling; her hands were in the pockets of a short tweed coat; her hair was done up rather untidily, with a broad plait encircling her head, but her face was bewitching in its fresh beauty and sparkling animation, and her eyes seemed alive with mischief. She jumped off the chair and looked up at Sidney with a mixture of bashfulness and assurance. Sidney held out her hand at once. "We have been left to introduce ourselves. I am Sidney Urquhart, a close neighbour of your—your cousin's. And he has asked me to come and have a chat with you." "And to find out what kind of species I am," said the girl, with a laugh. "I'm Jockie—that's who I am—Jockie Borlace. And I've cycled forty miles to see if he can do anything for me." "Tell me all about it," said Sidney, smiling into Jockie's eyes with instant friendliness.