“Must you do business with Sir Algernon? I am sure it can’t be very good for you. You are looking much more ill. I don’t think Dr. Lorry would like it.”
He smiled a little at her grandmotherly tone.
“Is it to do with money?” she asked, with a remembrance of a certain pucker on father’s brow, which Christmas bills brought with them.
“Partly; not all. Let’s talk of something else, instead of boring you with my affairs,” her cousin said.
“They don’t bore me. Of course I care to know your bothers!” she declared.
He raised his eyebrows and looked at her in a considering kind of way. “Do you? I wonder why?” He laughed a little. “Go ahead and talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve done to-day. I suppose you had letters by the ream from your beloved Chichesters?”
Sydney reddened, remembering their last interview upon that subject. Her cousin seemed to recollect it too.
“Has it ever struck you that you’ll have a much better time of it when I’m gone?” he said. “As long as you look pretty and walk into a room the right way, Aunt Rica won’t interfere with you much.”
“How can you?” the girl cried, with hot indignation. “I hate to hear you talk like that! Why, you’ve been very kind to me—except about the Chichesters!”