his mother would never repudiate.

"Oh!" she said, lying back in her chair pale and faint, "to think what
might have happened!"

As she spoke her son re-entered the room, and by his side a young
lady--so stately, so majestic in her dark beauty, that involuntarily
the mother and daughter arose.

"My mother, this young lady saved my life. Try and thank her for me.
Lady Kingsland, Miss Silver."

Surely some subtle power of fascination invested this dark daughter of
the earth. The liquid dark eyes lifted themselves in mute appeal to
the great lady's face, and then the proudest woman in England opened
her arms with a sudden impulse and took the outcast to her bosom.

"I can never thank you," she murmured. "The service you have rendered
me is beyond all words."

An hour later Sybilla went slowly back to her room. She had
breakfasted _tête-à-tête_ with my lady and her daughter, while Sir
Everard, in scarlet coat and cord and tops, had mounted his bonny bay
and ridden off to Lady Louise and the fox-hunt, and to his fate, though
he knew it not.

"Really, Mildred," my lady said, "a most delightful young person,
truly. Do you know, if she does not succeed in finding her friends I
should like to retain her as a companion?"