Lord Sandilands was ascribed to his chivalrous fidelity to her. She knew that this was a fiction, as well as he knew it; but as it was a gleam of additional glorification for her, and such a supposition saved him a great deal of trouble, and preserved him from match-making mammas, each acquiesced in the view which society chose to adopt, with most amiable affability. Captain Wybrant laughed at the theory of Sandilands' celibacy, as he laughed at most other theories; and said (and believed) that if a man must be fool enough to wear the willow for any woman, his Lucy was the best worth wearing it for, of all the women in the world. And though the whole thing was a myth, Lord Sandilands never cordially liked jolly Hugh Wybrant--perhaps no man ever yet did cordially like the individual in whose favour he has been jilted, though he may not have cared a straw for the fickle fair one, but have honestly regarded her inconstancy as a delightful circumstance, demanding ardent gratitude. For several years after Gertrude Gautier's death, the Hon. John Borlase indulged in frequent and extensive foreign travel; and during this period the infant girl who had inherited her beauty, apparently without her delicacy of constitution, was well cared for. The child's father cared little for her, beyond scrupulously providing for her physical welfare. She was an embodied reproach to him, though he never said so to himself, but persuaded himself his indifference to the little girl whom he saw but rarely and at long intervals, arose from his not naturally caring about children. When she was eight years old, and the memory of her mother had almost died out, though the indelible effect of the sad and guilty episode in his life with which she was connected remained impressed upon him, Lord Sandilands placed the little girl under Mrs. Bloxam's care, with the conditions already stated and the results already partially developed. He had provided ample funds to meet the exigencies of her education; he had made due arrangements for their safe and punctual transmission to Mrs. Bloxam; he had but vague notions concerning the requirements and the risks of girlhood: his dominant idea was, that in a respectable boarding-school the girl must be safe; he did not want to see her; she must not know him as her father; and he had no fancy for playing any part, undertaking any personation,--in short, having any trouble unrepresented by money,--about her. John Borlase had been unscrupulous, and a trifle hard in his nature; and despite the conflict in his breast which had ensued on Gertrude Gautier's death, and which for all his impassive bearing had been fierce and long, Lord Sandilands was not much more scrupulous, and was decidedly harder. If the girl married, or if she died, he should be made acquainted with the circumstance; and as a matter of fact--fact, not sentiment, being the real consideration in this matter--either was all he need know. As