After the grief and disappointment of those two deaths—first of an infant of a few weeks old, and afterwards of a lovely child of two years—James Dalbrook hardened his heart for a little while against the fair young sister who survived them. She could not perpetuate that barony which was the crown of his greatness; or if by special grace her father’s title might be in after-days bestowed upon the husband of her choice—which in the event of her marrying judiciously and marrying wealth, might not be impracticable—it would be an alien to his race who would bear the title which he, James Dalbrook, had created. He had so longed for a son, and behold two had been given to him, and upon both the blight had fallen. When people praised his daughter’s childish loveliness he shook his head despondently, thinking that she too would be taken, like her brothers, before ever the bud became a flower. His heart sickened at thought of this contingency, and of his heir-at-law in the event of his dying childless, a first cousin, clerk in an auctioneer’s office at Weymouth, a sandy-haired freckled youth, without an aspirate, with a fixed idea that he was an authority upon dress, style, and billiards, an insupportable young man under any conditions, but hateful to murderousness as one’s next heir. To think of that freckled snob strutting about the estate in years to come, blinking with his white eyelashes at those things which had been so dear to the dead! His wife, to whom he owed the estate, had no relations nearer or clearer to her than the freckled auctioneer was to her husband. There remained for them both to work out their plans for the disposal of that estate and fortune which was their own to deal with as they pleased. Already James Dalbrook had dim notions of a Dalbrook Scholarship Fund, in which future barristers should have their long years of waiting upon fortune made easier to them, and for which they should bless the memory of the famous advocate. Happily those brooding fears were not realized; this time the bud was not blighted, the flower carried no canker in its heart, but opened its petals to the morning of life, a strong bright blossom, revelling in sun and shower, wind and spray. Juanita grew from babyhood to girlhood with hardly an illness, save the regulation childish complaints, which touched her as lightly as a butterfly’s wing touches the flowers.