Cyril presented a contrast to all the others of the family by being very fair where they were all inclined to be dark. As a child he had been singularly beautiful, with big blue eyes and a cloud of golden hair about his softly tinted face. His mother had been devoted to him from his babyhood, and even his father had found it difficult not to make something of an especial darling of him. Now at three and twenty he was a very good-looking fellow, although some declared that he was girlish and effeminate in his looks. Certainly the golden hair and big blue eyes were rather suggestive of a fair girl; and this likeness was perhaps a little intensified from the fact that he was quite clean-shaven, and did not grow even a moustache, as Ray had often begged him to do. But he had inherited sufficient of the Cossart type of features to redeem the face from the charge of weakness. It was a refined and etherialised face, but something of the square outline of the jaw remained, although the lips did not close over each other in the firm way that was noticeable in North and Ray, but were a little inclined to fall apart, giving the face a dreamy and abstracted expression, which was much admired by many of the young ladies of Isingford, who were fond of making studies from Cyril Cossart’s profile, and turning them into pictures called “Sir Galahad,” or “The Knight without fear and without reproach.” “Here they are!” cried Ray, who was still lingering about the half open door, “I hear wheels stopping. They have come! Mother, I shall go and open the door? It will look more friendly.” She was across the hall before she had finished speaking, and had thrown the front door wide open before the maid could arrive upon the scene. North followed her and stood full in view. The next minute their father led in a girl dressed in deep mourning, whom he pushed towards his daughter saying— “There Sheila, there is Ray. She will take care of you and make you feel at home.” “To be sure I will!” cried Ray, kissing Sheila’s cold face. “Come along in and see mother and Raby. I’m so glad you have come all safe. It feels just as though it would snow. But it won’t matter if it does, now that you’re safe home.” Sheila, a little shy and bewildered in her strange surroundings, was led into the warm drawing-room, where she was kissed by Mrs. Tom and Raby, and installed beside the fire in a comfortable chair, almost before she had time to get out a word. Mr. Tom had come in with North and Oscar, and there was a considerable confusion of tongues, kissing and welcoming. For the moment Sheila was left in her cosy corner; and it was then that she heard a gentle voice at her elbow saying— “You must let me add my welcome to the rest; though I am afraid it is really a sorrowful time for you. We are inclined to forget that what is our gain is your loss.”