Cyril lay motionless on his face through this harangue.
"If you go on so, you are sure to end by having some attack. People always do. And as for the Lucases, I only hope you will take warning, and keep clear of them in the future! It ought to be a lesson to you. An artful, designing girl, like Miss Lucas—"
Cyril spoke without stirring. "Will you stop that, if you please! I wish to be alone."
"Well, I must say, I do think you are a very ungrateful nephew," sighed Sybella, with a different species of pathos from the pathos of little Emmie.
"I must say, I do think—! When you have always been so much to me! And, I am sure, the care and thought I have given—And now, just because—Yes, I am going. I haven't the least desire to stay where I am not wanted. Not the very least! I only came to bring you a note. It has been left at the door—Pearce doesn't know, or else he won't say, by whom. And I can't imagine who the note can be from. It is a lady's hand, at least a girl's. It might be a child's. Would you like me to open and see for you, if you are not well?"
"A note!" Cyril's confused brain had not at once taken in the sense of the word. It dawned upon him in a flash; and with a leap he was on his feet, demanding, "Where? Give it to me!"
The astonished Sybella fell back two paces; curiosity strongly awakened. She could not but be aware that something unusual was afloat.
"Where is the note?" he repeated, and Sybella's reluctant fingers yielded it.
"That is not Jean Trevelyan's handwriting, Cyril. Who can it be from? You don't correspond with any other young ladies, I hope!" Her manner implying that Jean was enough and too much!
The words put Cyril on his guard. One glance revealed to him that the childish unformed writing was indeed Emmie's. Within this little Silurian-grey envelope, crookedly directed, lay his fate—the question of his future life-happiness or life-misery, once for all decided! So it seemed to Cyril at the moment, though such apparent decisions do not always turn out to be permanently decisive. Yet, while feeling thus, he had the self-control to turn carelessly away, to toss the note on a side-table, and to walk to the mantelpiece.