Byrne caught cold one bitter Argentine day, and died of pneumonia before
the week was out.

Sir Arthur was heart-broken. He packed Juliet off to a convent school
near Buenos Ayres, and shut himself up in his consulate, refusing to meet
those who would have offered their sympathy, and going from his room to
his office, and back again, like a man in a dream.

Not for more than a year did Juliet see again the only friend she had now
left in the world; and it was then she heard for the first time that he
was not really her father, and that the woman she had called "Mother" had
had no right to that name. She was fifteen years old when this blow fell
on her; and she had not yet reached her sixteenth birthday when Sir
Arthur was transferred back to Europe.

"Your home must always be with me, Juliet," he had said, when he broke to
her his ignorance of her origin. "I have only you left now."

But though he was kind, and even affectionate to her, he showed no real
anxiety for her society. She was sent to a school in Switzerland as soon
as they landed in Europe; and, while she used to fancy that at the
beginning of the holidays he was glad to see her return, she was much
more firmly convinced that at the end of them he was at least equally
pleased to see her depart.

She was nineteen before he realized that she could not be kept at school
for ever; and when he considered the situation, and saw himself, a man
scarcely over forty, saddled with a grown-up girl, who was neither his
own daughter nor that of the woman he had loved, and to whom he had sworn
to care for the child as if she were indeed his own, it must be admitted