Читать книгу Sydney Lisle, the Heiress of St. Quentin онлайн

17 страница из 44

He looked at long-legged, short-frocked Sydney with a sudden anxiety, and for a few weeks actually glanced down the “Personal and Social” column of The Standard in the hope of his eye falling on—“A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Viscount Lisle, only son of the Marquess of St. Quentin, and ...,” some damsel of high degree. But before long he forgot the matter in the press of daily life, and five years had passed peacefully away without anything happening to remind him of the House of Lisle or its connection with his little Sydney.

And now, without warning, the blow had fallen.

Lord St. Quentin, as Lord Lisle had become through his father’s death four years ago, had met with a fearful motor-accident, in which he had sustained some internal injury, from which the doctors feared there was no recovery. He might linger on for months, but the end was certain, and he was unmarried.

Sydney Lisle had been ignored by her father’s family for nearly eighteen years; but their man of business had known where to find her. It was he who wrote to Dr. Chichester, requesting that he would resign his guardianship of Miss Lisle into the hands of the cousin whose heir she had now become, the Marquess of St. Quentin.