“I know I’m not much good,” she said, “but, Cousin St. Quentin, I do care for you, in spite of this. Why didn’t you go and tell the girl all about it—just everything, as you have told me? Mother says if you love people really you must go on loving even if they do wrong, because the real love that is put into us is a bit of God. That girl would have gone on loving you—I know she would.”
“I wish to goodness I had let Bridge do his worst!” said St. Quentin. “I wish I’d had the pluck to do the right thing then, instead of wasting the money that was given me to use, not chuck away. Now you know why I’m telling Fane to ruin the estate my ancestors took pride in by cutting down the timber at the bidding of that man! Because I was too great a coward to do the right thing first—when I could.”
Sydney looked her cousin in the face.
“Please forgive me if I am very impertinent, St. Quentin,” she said earnestly. “You say you wish that you had done the right thing then.” She hesitated for an instant, and then spoke the last words firmly: “You wish that you had done it then—why don’t you do it now?”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CHAIN BROKEN
For a full minute there was silence in the big room. Then St. Quentin looked up.
“It’s rather late in the day,” he said, “but possibly better late than never. Sydney, will you write a letter for me?”
She thought of another letter she had written for him more than two months ago, but there was a considerable difference in the subject matter of that letter and to-day’s.