By Sir Gilbert’s desire, no communication was ever entered into with Mr. Frank Travis. The baronet preferred to sacrifice the fifteen hundred pounds which Alec had invested in the business rather than reopen before the eyes of strangers a chapter of family history which, as he trusted, was now closed for ever. CHAPTER VII. TOO LATE Years nearly a score have come and gone since Mr. Winch brought home the news of the untimely demise of the whilom heir of Withington Chase. Many have been the changes under the old roof-tree during that time. Sir Gilbert Clare, who is now entering on his seventy-fourth year, is both a widower and childless. Not only is the second Lady Clare dead, but her three sons have followed her to the tomb. Two of them have died of consumption when on the verge of manhood, while the youngest has been accidentally drowned. Yes, a lonely, childless old man is Sir Gilbert, but still carrying himself bravely before the world, as if in defiance of all the blows a cruel fate has aimed at him, and still retaining a large measure of his old irritability of temper and imperiousness of manner. Would it be too much to wonder whether his heart is ever touched with compunction, or regret, when his eyes chance to rest on a certain tablet above the family pew—that pew now empty of all but himself—which professes to record the death of his firstborn? That, however, is one of those things known to himself alone. The venue of our story now changes to St. Oswyth’s, a town in the Midlands of some twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants. It was the fourteenth of May, and Ethel Thursby’s nineteenth birthday. Nowhere was there a happier girl than she. Breakfast was just over, and she had come out into the garden to gather a posy of such flowers as were already in bloom for the drawing-room table. Earlier there had been congratulations and presents from her aunts. Miss Matilda had given her “such a love” of a gold watch and chain, while Miss Jane’s gift had taken the shape of an inlaid writing-desk filled with stationery stamped with Ethel’s monogram, so that really, as she told herself, it was quite a pity her correspondents were so few in number, and that she could not well write to any of them oftener than once a week. Nor had Tamsin forgotten her—dear, rugged, true-hearted Tamsin, who had been her aunt’s maid, and hers too for that matter, for more years than she could remember. Ethel’s present from her had been a silver thimble, having engraven on its rim the appropriate legend, “A stitch in time saves nine.” While busying herself with the gathering and arrangement of her flowers, Ethel’s thoughts were engaged on two very diverse subjects. As she rose from the breakfast-table this morning, her Aunt Matilda had said to her: “My dear, I and my sister would like to see you in the drawing-room at twelve precisely, when we shall have something of importance to communicate to you.”