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

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“My little girl,” mother was speaking, with a gentle hand on the untidy brown head on her knee, “my poor little girl!”

Sydney lifted up her piteous face.

“Oh, mother, you will let me stay your little girl! I can’t go away. Oh, mother, you always said I was given to you!”

Dr. Chichester blew his nose violently, and came and sat down beside his wife.

“See here, my little Sydney,” he said. “God knows you can’t cease to be our child to us, as you have been for these seventeen years. If it were acting rightly to keep you, do you suppose your mother and I could consent to let our little girl go from us? Still, we have got to do the right thing; and when your poor young father gave you to us, he had no idea of your ever coming near the title. But now this accident to your cousin, Lord St. Quentin, makes you heiress to it, so your cousin’s man of business writes to tell me. Lord St. Quentin wants you, and, my little girl, you must go.”

“Couldn’t I say I don’t want to be a marchioness?” poor Sydney asked despairingly; “isn’t there anybody else to be one instead?”