She began to look forward to Tuesdays and Fridays as the best days in the week, and save up the nicest bits of news to tell Miss Morrell—Hugh’s last success—Madge’s Latin prize at the High School—or some kindness shown her by St. Quentin.
Katharine Morrell seemed interested in all and everything that Sydney had to tell, even in the news of the Castle, which seemed to its teller so infinitely less worth hearing than the doings of the Chichesters and home.
CHAPTER IX
THE HEIRESS-APPARENT
On a clear, cold December evening a month after Sydney’s arrival, the grand old castle of St. Quentin seemed to have cast off for the moment its habitual sombreness.
Sounds of talk and laughter came from the brilliantly-lit dining-room, and the great hall, though empty still, was gay with flowers—great pots of chrysanthemums and arum lilies standing against walls where more than one cannon ball was embedded.
On this night Lord St. Quentin had elected to give a dinner to his principal tenants, and afterwards to formally present Sydney to them as his heir.
It was in vain Dr. Lorry urged that excitement was bad for his patient; it was in vain Sydney begged to be excused the ordeal. The Lisles of history had been renowned for their obstinacy in the days when half the Castle had been shattered by cannon, and the present head of the house was not behind his ancestors in that respect.
“The child has been brought up in a corner,” he said, “but her acknowledgment is going to be as public as I can make it. The tenantry may just as well know something of her before she comes to rule over them.”