Daddy's Girl E-Book

L. T. Meade

• Herausgeber: Interactive Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"Daddy's Girl" by L. T. Meade is a heartwarming Victorian novel that tells the story of little Nancy Kingsley, who is cherished by her father. When tragedy strikes and Nancy loses her beloved mother, she must navigate the complexities of life in her father's home, where she faces new relationships and challenges. The novel explores themes of family, love, and resilience as Nancy grows and learns valuable life lessons. With its endearing characters and emotional depth, this book offers a touching portrayal of a father-daughter bond and the trials of a young girl coming of age in the 19th century.

Leseprobe

L. T. Meade

Daddy’s Girl

Published by Sovereign

This edition first published in 2023

Copyright © 2023 Sovereign

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781787367784

Contents

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER I.

Philip Ogilvie and his pretty wife were quarrelling, as their custom was, in the drawing-room of the great house in Belgrave Square, but the Angel in the nursery upstairs knew nothing at all about that. She was eight years old, and was, at that critical moment when her father and mother were having words which might embitter all their lives, and perhaps sever them for ever, unconsciously and happily decorating herself before the nursery looking-glass.

The occasion was an important one, and the Angel’s rosebud lips were pursed up in her anxiety, and her dark, pretty brows were somewhat raised, and her very blue eyes were fixed on her own charming little reflection.

“Shall it be buttercups, or daisies, or both?” thought the Angel to herself.

A box of wild flowers, which had come up from the country that day, lay handy. There were violets and primroses, and quantities of buttercups and daisies, amongst these treasures.

“Mother likes me when I am pretty, father likes me anyhow,” she thought, and then she stood and contemplated herself, and pensively took up a bunch of daisies and held them against her small, slightly flushed cheek, and then tried the effect of the buttercups in her golden brown hair. By-and-by, she skipped away from the looking-glass, and ran up to a tall, somewhat austere lady, who was seated at a round table, writing busily.

“What do you want, Sibyl? Don’t disturb me now,” said this individual.

“It is only just for a moment,” replied the Angel, knitting her brows, and standing in such a position that she excluded all light from falling on the severe-looking lady’s writing-pad.

“Which is the prettiest, buttercups or daisies, or the two twisted up together?” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry me, child, I want to catch this post. My brother is very ill, and he’ll be so annoyed if he doesn’t hear from me. Did you say buttercups and daisies mixed? Yes, of course, mix them, that is the old nursery rhyme.”

The little Sibyl stamped a small foot encased in a red shoe with an impatient movement, and turned once more to contemplate herself in the glass. Miss Winstead, the governess, resumed her letter, and a clock on the mantelpiece struck out seven silvery chimes.

“They’ll be going in to dinner; I must be very quick indeed,” thought the child. She began to pull out the flowers, to arrange them in little groups, and presently, by the aid of numerous pins, to deck her small person.

“Mother likes me when I am pretty,” she repeated softly under her breath, “but father likes me anyhow.” She thought over this somewhat curious problem. Why should father like her anyhow? Why should mother only kiss her and pet her when she was downright pretty?

“Do I look pretty?” she said at last, dancing back to the governess’s side.

Miss Winstead dropped her pen and looked up at the radiant little figure. She had contrived to tie some of the wild flowers together, and had encircled them round her white forehead, and mixed them in her flowing locks, and here, there, and everywhere on her white dress were bunches of buttercups and daisies, with a few violets thrown in.

“Do I look pretty?” repeated Sibyl Ogilvie.

“You are a very vain little girl,” said Miss Winstead. “I won’t tell you whether you look pretty or not, you ought not to think of your looks. God does not like people who think whether they are pretty or not. He likes humble-minded little girls. Now don’t interrupt me any more.”

“There’s the gong, I’m off,” cried Sibyl. She kissed her hand to Miss Winstead, her face all alight with happiness.

“I know I am pretty, she always talks like that when I am,” thought the child, who had a very keen insight into character. “Mother will kiss me to-night, I am so glad. I wonder if Jesus Christ thinks me pretty, too.”

Sibyl Ogilvie, aged eight, had a theology of her own. It was extremely simple, and had no perplexing elements about it. There were three persons who were absolutely perfect. Jesus Christ Who lived in heaven, but Who saw everything that took place on earth, and her own father and mother. No one else was absolutely without sin, but these three were. It was a most comfortable doctrine, and it sustained her little heart through some perplexing passages in her small life. She used to shut her eyes when her mother frowned, and say softly under her breath—

“It’s not wrong, ’cos it’s mother. Mother couldn’t do nothing wrong, no more than Jesus could”; and she used to stop her ears when her mother’s voice, sharp and passionate, rang across the room. Something was trying mother dreadfully, but mother had a right to be angry; she was not sinful, like nurse, when she got into her tantrums. As to father, he was never cross. He did look tired and disturbed sometimes. It must be because he was sorry for the rest of the world. Yes, father and mother were perfection. It was a great support to know this. It was a very great honor to have been born their little girl. Every morning when Sibyl knelt to pray, and every evening when she offered up her nightly petitions, she thanked God most earnestly for having given her as parents those two perfect people known to the world as Philip Ogilvie and his wife.

“It was so awfully kind of you, Jesus,” Sibyl would say, “and I must try to grow up as nearly good as I can, because of You and father and mother. I must try not to be cross, and I must try not to be vain, and I must try to love my lessons. I don’t think I am really vain, Jesus. It is just because my mother likes me best when I am pretty that I want to be pretty. It’s for no other reason, really and truly; but I don’t like lessons, particularly spelling lessons. I cannot pretend I do. Can I?”

Jesus never made any audible response to the child’s query, but she often felt a little tug at her heart which caused her to fly to her spelling-book and learn one or two difficult words with frantic zeal.

As she ran downstairs now, she reflected over the problem of her mother’s kisses being softest and her mother’s eyes kindest when her own eyes were bright and her little figure radiant; and she also thought of the other problem, of her grave-eyed father always loving her, no matter whether her frock was torn, her hair untidy, or her little face smudged.

Because of her cherubic face, Sibyl had been called the Angel when quite a baby, and somehow the name stuck to her, particularly on the lips of her father. It is true she had a sparkling face and soft features and blue eyes; but she was, when all is said and done, a somewhat worldly little angel, and had, both in the opinions of Miss Winstead and nurse, as many faults as could well be packed into the breast of one small child. Both admitted that Sibyl had a very loving heart, but she was fearless, headstrong, at times even defiant, and was very naughty and idle over her lessons.

Miss Winstead was fond of taking complaints of Sibyl to Mrs. Ogilvie, and she was fond, also, of hoping against hope that these complaints would lead to satisfactory results; but, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Ogilvie never troubled herself about them. She was the sort of woman who took the lives of others with absolute unconcern; her own life absorbed every thought and every feeling. Anything that added to her own comfort was esteemed; anything that worried her was shut as much as possible out of sight. She was fond of Sibyl in her careless way. There were moments when she was proud of the pretty and attractive child, but she had not the slightest idea of attempting to mould her character, nor of becoming her instructress. One of Mrs. Ogilvie’s favorite theories was that mothers should not educate their children.

“The child should go to the mother for love and petting,” she would say. “Miss Winstead may complain of the darling as much as she pleases, but need not suppose that I shall scold her.”

It was Sibyl’s father, after all, who now and then spoke to her about her unworthy conduct.

“You are called the Angel, and you must try to act up to your name,” he said on one of these occasions, fixing his own dark-grey eyes on the little girl.

“Oh, yes, father,” answered the Angel, “but, you see, I wasn’t born that way, same as you was. It seems a pity, doesn’t it? You’re perfect and I am not. I can’t help the way I was born, can I, father?”

“No; no one is perfect, darling,” replied the father.

“You are,” answered the Angel, and she gave her head a defiant toss. “You and my mother and my beautiful Lord Jesus up in heaven. But I’ll try to please you, father, so don’t knit up your forehead.”

Sibyl as she spoke laid her soft hand on her father’s brow and tried to smooth out some wrinkles.

“Same as if you was an old man,” she said: “but you’re perfect, perfect, and I love you, I love you,” and she encircled his neck with her soft arms and pressed many kisses on his face.

On these occasions Philip Ogilvie felt uncomfortable, for he was a man with many passions and beset with infirmities, and at the time when Sibyl praised him most, when she uttered her charming, confident words, and raised her eyes full of absolute faith to his, he was thinking with a strange acute pain at his heart of a transaction which he might undertake and of a temptation which he knew well was soon to be presented to him.

“I should not like the child to know about it,” was his reflection; “but all the same, if I do it, if I fall, it will be for her sake, for hers alone.”

CHAPTER II

Sibyl skipped down to the drawing-room with her spirits brimful of happiness. She opened the door wide and danced in.

“Here I come,” she cried, “here I come, buttercups and daisies and violets and me.” She looked from one parent to the other, held out her flowing short skirts with each dimpled hand, and danced across the room.

Mrs. Ogilvie had tears in her eyes; she had just come to the sentimental part of her quarrel. At sight of the child she rose hastily, and walked to the window. Philip Ogilvie went down the room, put both his hands around Sibyl’s waist, and lifted her to a level with his shoulders.

“What a fairy-like little girl this is!” he cried.

“You are Spring come to cheer us up.”

“I am glad,” whispered Sibyl; “but let me down, please, father, I want to kiss mother.”

Mr. Ogilvie dropped her to the ground. She ran up to her mother.

“Father says I am Spring, look at me,” she said, and she gazed into the beautiful, somewhat sullen face of her parent.

Mrs. Ogilvie had hoped that Sibyl would not notice her tears, but Sibyl, gentle as she looked, had the eyes of a hawk.

“Something is fretting my ownest mother,” she whispered under her breath, and then she took her mother’s soft hand and covered it with kisses. After kissing it, she patted it, and then she returned to her father’s side.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ogilvie knew why, but as soon as Sibyl entered the room it seemed ridiculous for them to quarrel. Mrs. Ogilvie turned with an effort, said something kind to her husband, he responded courteously, then the dinner gong sounded, and the three entered the dining-room.

It was one of the customs of the house that Sibyl, when they dined alone, should always sit with her parents during this hour. Mrs. Ogilvie objected to the plan, urging that it was very bad for the child. But Ogilvie thought otherwise, and notwithstanding all the mother’s objections the point was carried. A high chair was placed for Sibyl next her father, and she occupied it evening after evening, nibbling a biscuit from the dessert, and airing her views in a complacent way on every possible subject under the sun.

“I call Miss Winstead crosspatch now,” she said on this occasion. “She is more cranky than you think. She is, really, truly, father.”

“You must not talk against your governess, Sibyl,” said her mother from the other end of the table.

“Oh, let her speak out to us, my dear,” said the father. “What was Miss Winstead cross about to-day, Sibyl?”

“Spelling, as usual,” said Sibyl briefly, “but more special ’cos Lord Jesus made me pretty.”

“Hush!” said the mother again.

Sibyl glanced at her father. There was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes which he could scarcely keep back.

“My dear,” he said, addressing his wife, “do you think Miss Winstead is just the person——”

“I beg of you, Philip,” interrupted the mother, “not to speak of the child’s teacher before her face. Sibyl, I forbid you to make unkind remarks.”

“It’s ’cos they’re both so perfect,” thought Sibyl, “but it’s hard on me not to be able to ’splain things. If I can’t, what is to be done?”

She munched her biscuit sorrowfully, and looked with steadfast eyes across the room. She supposed she would have to endure Miss Winstead, crosspatch as she was, and she did not enjoy the task which mother and Lord Jesus had set her.

The footman was in the act of helping Mr. Ogilvie to champagne, and Sibyl paused in her thoughts to watch the frothy wine as it filled the glass.

“Is it nice?” she inquired.

“Very nice, Sibyl. Would you like to taste it?”

“No, thank you, father. Nurse says if you drink wine when you’re a little girl, you grow up to be drunk as a hog.”

“My dear Sibyl,” cried the mother, “I really must speak to nurse. What a disgraceful thing to say!”

“Let us turn the subject,” said the father.

Sibyl turned it with a will.

“I ’spect I ought to ’fess to you,” she said. “I was cross myself to-day. Seems to me I’m not getting a bit perfect. I stamped my foot when Miss Winstead made me write all my spelling over again. Father, is it necessary for a little girl to spell long words?”

“You would not like to put wrong spelling into your letters to me, would you?” was the answer.

“I don’t think I’d much care,” said Sibyl, with a smile. “You’d know what I meant, wouldn’t you, whether I spelt the words right or not? All the same,” she added, “I’ll spell right if you wish it—I mean, I’ll try.”

“That’s a good girl. Now tell me what else you did naughty?”

“When Sibyl talks about her sins, would it not be best for her to do so in private?” said the mother again.

“But this is private,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “only her father and mother.”

Mrs. Ogilvie glanced at a footman who stood not far off, and who was in vain endeavoring to suppress a smile.

“I washed my doll’s clothes, although nurse told me not,” continued Sibyl, “and I made a mess in the night nursery. I spilt the water and wetted my pinny, and I would open the window, although it was raining. I ran downstairs, too, and asked Watson to give me a macaroon biscuit. He wasn’t to blame—Watson wasn’t.”

The unfortunate footman whose name was now introduced hastily turned his back, but his ears looked very red as he arranged some glasses on the sideboard.

“Father,” whispered Sibyl, “do you know that Watson has got a sweetheart, and——”

“Hush! hush!” said Mr. Ogilvie, “go on with your confessions.”

“They’re rather sad, aren’t they, father? Now I come to think of it, they are very, very sad. I didn’t do one right thing to-day ’cept to make myself pretty. Miss Winstead was so angry, and so was nurse, but when I am with them I don’t mind a bit being naughty. I wouldn’t be a flabby good girl for all the world.”

“Oh, Angel, what is to become of you?” said her father.

Sibyl looked full at him, her eyes sparkled, then a curious change came into them. He was good—perfect; it was lovely to think of it, but she felt sure that she could never be perfect like that. All the same, she did not want to pain him. She slipped her small hand into his, and presently she whispered:

“I’ll do anything in all the world to please you and mother and Lord Jesus.”

“That is right,” said the father, who gave a swift thought at the moment to the temptation which he knew was already on its way, and which he would never yield to but for the sake of the child.

The rest of the dinner proceeded without many more remarks, and immediately afterwards Sibyl kissed both her parents and went upstairs.

“Good-night, little Spring,” said her father, and there was a note of pain in his voice.

She gave him an earnest hug, and then she whispered—

“Is it ’cos I’m a wicked girl you’re sad?”

“No,” he answered, “you are not wicked, my darling; you are the best, the sweetest in all the world.”

“Oh, no, father,” answered Sibyl, “that is not true. I am not the best nor the sweetest, and I wouldn’t like to be too good, ’cept for you. Good-night, darling father.”

Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie returned to the drawing-room.

“You spoil that child,” said the wife, “but it is on a par with everything else you do. You have no perception of what is right. I don’t pretend to be a good mother, but I don’t talk nonsense to Sibyl. She ought not to speak about nurse and governess before servants, and it is disgraceful of her to drag the footman and his concerns into the conversation at dinner. She ought not, also, to boast about doing naughty things.”

“I wish you would leave the child alone,” said Ogilvie in an annoyed voice; “she is good enough for me, little pet, and I would not have her altered for the world. But now, Mildred, to return to our cause of dissension before dinner, we must get this matter arranged. What do you mean to do about your invitation to Grayleigh Manor?”

“I have given you my views on that subject, Philip; I am going.”

“I would much rather you did not.”

“I am sorry.” Mrs. Ogilvie shrugged her shoulders. “I am willing to please you in all reasonable matters; this is unreasonable, therefore I shall take my own way.”

“It is impossible for me to accompany you.”

“I can live without you for a few days, and I shall take the child.”

“Sibyl! No, I do not wish it.”

“I fear you must put up with it. I have written to say that Sibyl and I will go down on Saturday.”

Ogilvie, who had been seated, now rose, and went to the window. He looked out with a dreary expression on his face.

“You know as well as I do the reasons why it would be best for you not to go to Grayleigh Manor at present,” he said. “You can easily write to give an excuse. Remember, we were both asked, and the fact that I cannot leave town is sufficient reason for you to decline.”

“I am going,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. Her eyes, which were large and dark, flashed with defiance. Ogilvie looked at her with a frown between his brows.

“Is that your last word?” he inquired.

“It is, I go on Saturday. If you were not so disagreeable and disobliging you could easily come with me, but you never do anything to please me.”

“Nor you to please me, Mildred,” he was about to say, but he restrained himself. After a pause he said gently, “There is one thing that makes the situation almost unbearable.”

“And what is that?” she asked.

“The attitude of little Sibyl toward us both. She thinks us—Mildred, she thinks us perfect. What will happen to the child when her eyes are opened?”

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” was Mrs. Ogilvie’s flippant remark. “But that attitude is much encouraged by you. You make her morbid and sensitive.”

“Morbid! Sibyl morbid! There never was a more open-hearted, frank, healthy creature. Did you not hear her say at dinner that she would not be a flabby good girl for anything? Now, I must tell you that perhaps wrong as that speech was, it rejoiced my heart.”

“And it sickened me,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “You do everything in your power to make her eccentric. Now, I don’t wish to have an eccentric daughter. I wish to have a well brought up girl, who will be good while she is young, speak properly, not make herself in any way remarkable, learn her lessons, and make a successful debut in Society, all in due course.”

“With a view, doubtless, to a brilliant marriage,” added the husband, bitterly.

“I am going to knock all of this nonsense out of Sibyl,” was his wife’s answer, “and I mean to begin it when we get to Grayleigh Manor.”

Mrs. Ogilvie had hardly finished her words before an angry bang at the drawing-room door told her that her husband had left her.

Ogilvie went to his smoking-room at the other end of the hall. There he paced restlessly up and down. His temples were beating, and the pain at his heart was growing worse.

The postman’s ring was heard, and the footman, Watson, entered with a letter.

Ogilvie had expected this letter, and he knew what its purport would be. He only glanced at the writing, threw it on the table near, and resumed his walk up and down.

“It is the child,” he thought. “She perplexes me and she tempts me. Never was there a sweeter decoy duck to the verge of ruin. Poor little innocent white Angel! Her attitude toward her mother and me is sometimes almost maddening. Mildred wants to take that little innocent life and mould it after her own fashion. But, after all, am I any better than Mildred? If I yield to this”—he touched the letter with his hand—“I shall sweep in gold, and all money anxieties will be laid to rest. Little Sib will be rich by-and-by. This is a big thing, and if I do it I shall see my way to clearing off those debts which Mildred’s extravagance, and doubtless my own inclination, have caused me to accumulate. Whatever happens Sibyl will be all right; and yet—I don’t care for wealth, but Mildred does, and the child will be better for money. Money presents a shield between a sensitive heart like Sibyl’s and the world. Yes, I am tempted. Sibyl tempts me.”

He thrust the letter into a drawer, locked the drawer, put the key in his pocket, and ran up to Sibyl’s nursery. She was asleep, and there was no one else in the room. The blinds were down at the windows, and the nursery, pretty, dainty, sweet, and fresh, was in shadow.

Ogilvie stepped softly across the room, and drew up the blind. The moonlight now came in, and shed a silver bar of light across the child’s bed. Sibyl lay with her golden hair half covering the pillow, her hands and arms flung outside the bedclothes.

“Good-night, little darling,” said her father. He bent over her, and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. Feather touch as it was, it aroused the child. She opened her big blue eyes.

“Oh, father, is that you?” she cried in a voice of rapture.

“Yes, it is I. I came to wish you good-night.”

“You are good, you never forget,” said Sibyl. She clasped her arms round his neck. “I went to bed without saying my prayers. May I say them now to you?”

“Not for worlds,” it was the man’s first impulse to remark, but he checked himself. “Of course, dear,” he said.

Sibyl raised herself to a kneeling posture. She clasped her soft arms round her father’s neck.

“Pray God forgive me for being naughty to-day,” she began, “and pray God make me better to-morrow, ’cos it will please my darlingest father and mother; and I thank you, God, so much for making them good, very good, and without sin. Pray God forgive Sibyl, and try to make her better.

“Now, father, you’re pleased,” continued the little girl. “It was very hard to say that, because really, truly, I don’t want to be better, but I’ll try hard if it pleases you.”

“Yes, Sibyl, try hard,” said her father, “try very hard to be good. Don’t let goodness go. Grasp it tight with both hands and never let it go. So may God indeed help you.” Ogilvie said these words in a strained voice. Then he covered her up in bed, drew down the blinds, and left her.

“He’s fretted; it’s just ’cos the world is so wicked, and ’cos I’m not as good as I ought to be,” thought the child. A moment later she had fallen asleep with a smile on her face.

Ogilvie went to his club. There he wrote a short letter. It ran as follows:—

“My Dear Grayleigh,—

“Your offer was not unexpected. I thought it over even before it came, and I have considered it since. Although I am fully aware of the money advantages it holds out to me I have decided to decline it. Frankly, I cannot undertake to assay the Lombard Deeps Gold Mine, although your offer has been a great temptation. No doubt you will find another man more suited for your purpose.

“Yours sincerely,

“Philip Ogilvie.”

It was between one and two that same night that Ogilvie let himself in with his latchkey.

His wife had been to one or two receptions, and had not yet gone to bed. She was standing in the hall, looking radiant as he had seldom seen her. She was dressed beautifully, and her hair and neck were covered with diamonds.

“What,” he cried, “up still, Mildred? You ought to be in bed.”

He did not give her any glance of admiration, beautiful as she appeared. He shivered slightly with a movement which she did not notice as she stood before him, the lamplight falling all over her lovely dress and figure.

“I am so glad you have come back, Phil,” she said. “I shall sleep better now that I have seen you. I hear that Lord Grayleigh has offered you the post of engineer on the board of the Lombard Deeps Mine Company.”

Ogilvie did not answer. After a moment’s pause he said in a sullen tone—

“Had you not better go to bed? It is much too late for you to be up.”

“What does that matter? I am far too excited to sleep, and it is wrong of you to keep things of moment from your wife. This offer means a large addition to our income. Why, Phil, Phil, we can buy a country place now; we can do, oh! so many things. We can pay those terrible debts that worry you. What is the matter? Aren’t you pleased? Why do you frown at me? And you are pale, are you ill?”

“Come into my smoking-room,” he said, gravely. He took her hand and, drawing her in, switched on the electric light. Then he turned his wife round and looked full at her.

“This will make a great difference in our position,” she said. Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks were flushed, her pearly teeth showed between her parted lips.

“What do you mean by our position?” he said.

“You know perfectly well that we have not money enough to keep up this house; it is a struggle from first to last.”

“And yet I earn close on six thousand a year, Mildred. Have you never considered that you are the person who makes it a struggle?”

“It is impossible; impossible to manage,” she said, petulantly.

“It is, when you buy all these worthless baubles”—he touched her diamonds, and then he started away from her. “Why you should saddle yourself and me with debts almost impossible to meet for the sake of these is beyond my comprehension; but if you really do want a fresh toy in the way of an ornament to-morrow you have but to order it—that is, in moderation.”

“Ah! I knew you had accepted,” she said, making a quick dancing movement with her small feet. “Now I am happy; we can have a place if possible on the river. I have always longed to live close to the Thames. It is most unfashionable not to have a country seat, and the child will be well off by-and-by. I was told to-night by a City man who is to be one of the directors of the new company, that if you are clever you can make a cool forty thousand pounds out of this business. He says your name is essential to float the thing with the public.”

“You know, perhaps, what all this means?” said Ogilvie, after a pause.

“Why do you speak in that tone, quite with the Sibyl air?”

“Don’t dare to mention the child’s name at a moment like this. I just wish to tell you, Mildred, in a few words, what it would mean to the world at large if I assayed the Lombard Deeps Gold Mine.”

“Oh, your business terms do so puzzle me,” she answered. “I declare I am getting sleepy.” Mrs. Ogilvie yawned slightly.

“It would be better if you went to bed, but as you are here I shall put your mind at rest. If I accepted Grayleigh’s offer——”

“If! But you have done so, of course you have.”

“If I do, my name as engineer to the company will cause many people to buy shares. Now, Mildred, I am not sure of the Lombard Deeps Gold Mine. I know more about this business than I can explain to you, and you have a tongue, and women cannot keep secrets.”

“As usual, you taunt me,” she said, “but what does that matter? I could bear even an insult from you to-night, I am so excited and so pleased. I believe in the Lombard Deeps Gold Mine. I intend to put all the money I can lay hold of into it. Of course you will assay the Lombard Deeps? I never could make out what assaying meant, but it seems to be a way of raking in gold, and I was told to-night by Mr. Halkett that you are the most trusted assayer in London. Has the letter come yet? Has Lord Grayleigh yet offered you the post?”

“The letter has come.”

“You would make thousands a year out of it. Phil, oh, Phil, how happy I am! You have replied, have you not?”

“I have.”

“Then why do you keep me in suspense? It is settled. What are you so glum about?”

“I have declined the offer. I cannot assay the Lombard Deeps Gold Mine.”

“Philip!” His wife’s voice was at first incredulous, then it rose into a scream.

“You cannot be speaking the truth,” she said.

“My answer is posted. I am not too scrupulous about small things, but I draw the line at a matter of that sort. Go to bed.”

She did not speak for a moment, her face turned pale, then she went close up to him.

“I hate you,” she said; “go your own way in the future,” and she left him standing silent.

CHAPTER III.

Sibyl and her mother went to Grayleigh Manor on the following Saturday. Sibyl was wild with excitement. Nurse was going, of course, to look after her, but Miss Winstead was to remain at home. Sibyl felt that she could manage nurse, but there were moments when Miss Winstead was a little obstinate. She would have a delightful time now in the country with her perfect mother. Of course, there was the pain of parting with father, who was just as perfect, if not a little more so. In her heart of hearts Sibyl felt that she understood her father, and that there were times when she did not quite understand her mother; but, never mind, her mother was the perfection of all feminine beauty and loveliness, and grace and goodness, and her father was the perfection of all masculine goodness and nobility of character. Sibyl in her heart of hearts wished that she had been born a boy.

“I am much more like a boy than a girl,” she thought, “and that is why I understand father so well. But it will be lovely going to the country with mother, my ownest mother. I expect I’ll have great fun; and, as mother doesn’t care so very much whether I am perfect or not, perhaps I can be a little naughty on my own account. That will be lovely. I can’t be really naughty with father, it is impossible; father is so very tall up, and has such grand thoughts about things; but I can with mother.”

So Sibyl watched the packing of her dainty frocks and gay sashes and pretty ribbons, and then ran down to the smoking-room to kiss and hug her father.

Ogilvie was very grave and silent, and did not say a word, nor draw her out in any way, and her mother was out most of the time either paying calls or shopping, and at last the day dawned when they were to go away. Ogilvie had kissed Sibyl with great passion the night before.

“Don’t forget me while you are away, little woman,” he said, “and look after mother, won’t you?”

“She won’t need me to look after her, she’s quite, quite perfect,” said Sibyl; “but I’m going to watch her, and try to copy her.”

“Child, don’t do that,” said the man.

“Not copy my ownest mother? What do you mean, father?”

“Well, well, darling, God will look after you, I do believe. You are not far from Him, are you, Sib? You know we call you the Angel. Angels are supposed to have their home in heaven.”

“Well, my home is right down here on earth,” said Sibyl in a very contented tone. “I’ll have a real jolly time away, I ’spect.”

“I hope there will be some nice little boys and girls there with whom you can play; and go to bed early, Sib, just for father’s sake, and don’t forget to pray for me.”

“I will, I will,” said the child; “I always thank God for you because he made you so beautiful and good.”