Situated as Severndale was, remote from the other estates upon the river
and never brought into social touch with its neighbors, Peggy was hardly
known. When Neil Stewart came home on leave he was only too glad to get
away from the social side of his life in the service, and the weeks
spent with his little girl at Severndale had always been the delight of
his life. They took him into a new world all his own in which the small
vexations of the outer service world were entirely forgotten.

And how he looked forward to those visits. He rarely spoke of them to
his friends, mentioned Severndale to very few and hardly a dozen knew of
Peggy's existence. It was a peculiar attitude, but Neil Stewart had
never been reconciled to the cruel fate which had taken from him the
beautiful wife he had loved so devotedly, and the thought of guests at
Severndale without her there to entertain them as she had been
accustomed to, was peculiarly abhorent to him. He became almost morbid
on the subject and did not realize that he was growing selfish in his
sorrow and making Peggy pay the penalty.

But something in the way of an awakening had come to him during his
recent visit, and it had shocked him. The child Peggy was a child no
longer but a very charming young girl on the borderland of womanhood. In
a year or two she would be a young woman and entitled to her place in
the social world. Poor Neil Stewart, more than once upon retiring to his
bedroom after one of his delightful evenings spent with Peggy,
desperately ran his fingers through his curly hair and asked aloud:
"What under the sun AM I to do? I can't leave that child vegetating here
any longer, yet who will come to live with her or where shall I send
her?"

But the question was still unanswered when he left Severndale and now