It was certainly to be deplored that Ronny’s natural protector was not better fitted for his responsible office. Though Lord Onslow had shown spasmodic bursts of affection for the lad and had undergone in New York a useless martyrdom in his behalf, which a man who, to speak familiarly, had kept his head upon his shoulders, would have known how to avoid, he had not been a father to him in the true sense of the word. He had not once essayed to reach the mother’s heart through the child’s during all the years that he had been separated from her. How differently Jacynth would have acted in his place; but then, as he reflected, he would never have parted from Fenella at all. He would have given her no reason, no excuse for desiring to leave him, and as for those flirtations of her juvenile matronhood, he would not have taken them too seriously, for he would have felt convinced that she would outgrow them--would leave them behind, very likely, with the cutting of her wisdom teeth. Well, life’s experience had done for her what a husband’s guidance had failed to do. She was amazingly reasonable now, and might develop into a delightful companion for a man of sense. It was a pity, Jacynth thought again, but I do not believe he avowed the thought, that Frank should have been so wanting in this quality. A fine fellow without doubt. A man to lead a forlorn hope in an emergency, only forlorn hopes are unfortunately rare as everyday occurrences. A grain of common sense would have been much more to the purpose, and this grain was unhappily just what Fenella’s husband lacked. When his friend’s deficiencies were not vaguely outlining themselves upon the smoke-wreaths before him, the recollection of a certain episode would take their place, which never failed to bring a curious half smile upon the smoker’s face, not a smile of the lips, but an unconscious wrinkling of the skin in the neighborhood of the eyes, which conveyed the impression of some inward pleasure. The episode had occurred the first morning that Ronny had been well enough to be taken out in a bath chair to Sefton Park, his mother and Jacynth walking on either side. The little boy had espied a sailor sitting on a bench with a smoked-out pipe in his hand (lacking, perhaps, the means of replenishing it), and having the vision of his friend the bos’n before his eyes, and a full comprehension, gathered from his night upon the mast, of the dangers that lie in wait for those who go down to the sea in ships, had asked that his bath chair might be stopped, while he pulled out his new purse and extracted one of the sixpences his mother had put into it for the tobaccoless sailor. The man’s gratitude had been unbounded. He had taken off his hat to all the group under the evident impression that it was a family party, and “May all your progeny, sir, and my lady’s, take after this ’ere little chap,” he had said at parting, “it’s the best wish a grateful heart can salute ye