d a revocation
of all that had pleased him in the former one. Beecot senior wrote many
pages of abuse--he always did babble like a complaining woman when
angered. He declined to sanction the marriage and ordered his son at
once--underlined--to give up all thought of making Sylvia Norman his
wife. It would have been hard enough, wrote Beecot, to have received her
as a daughter-in-law even with money, seeing that she had no position
and was the daughter of a murdered tradesman, but seeing also that she
was a pauper, and worse, a girl without a cognomen, he forbade Paul to
bestow on her the worthy name of Beecot, so nobly worn by himself. There
was much more to the same effect, which Paul did not read, and the
letter ended grandiloquently in a command that Paul was to repair at
once to the Manor and there grovel at the feet of his injured father.

To this despotic epistle the young man answered in a few lines. He said
that he intended to marry Sylvia, and that nothing would make him give
her up, and that he would not meet his father again until that father
remembered that his son was an Englishman and not a slave. Paul signed
his letter without the usual "your affectionate son," for he felt that
he had small love for this imperious old man who declined to control his
passions. So he now, knew the worst. The breach between himself and his
father was wider than ever, and he had only his youth and his brains to
depend upon, in making a living for himself and a home for Sylvia.
Strange to say, Paul's spirits rose, and he braced himself bravely to do
battle with fortune for his beloved.

Sylvia, under the charge of Deborah, and escorted by Bart Tawsey, had
duly left Gwynne Street, bag and baggage, and she was now established in
Rose Cottage, Jubileetown. The house was a small one, and there was not
a single rose in the garden around it. Indeed, as the cottage had been
newly erected, there was not even a garden, and it stood amidst a bare
acre with a large drying-ground at the back. But the cottage, on the
outskirts of the new suburb, was, to all intents and purposes, in the
country, and Sylvia's weary eyes were so gladdened by green fields and
glorious trees that she forgot the nakedness of her immediate
surroundings. She was assigned the best room in the small abode, and one
of the first things she did was to write a letter to Paul asking him to
repair to Rose Cottage to witness the marriage of Deborah and Bart. The
handmaide