cares, for some one
else."

"Some one else? Do you know whom?" Brooks asked.

"If you do not know," Lady Caroom answered, "I do not."

Brooks threw aside all attempt at disguise. He looked across at Lady
Caroom, and his eyes were very bright.

"I have never believed," he said, "that Sybil would be likely to care
for me. I can scarcely believe it now."

Lady Caroom hesitated.

"In any case," she said, "could you ask her to marry you? You must see
that as things are it would be impossible!"

"Impossible!" he muttered. "Impossible!"

"Of course," she answered, briskly. "You must be a man of the world
enough to know that. You could not ask a girl in Sybil's position to
share a borrowed name, nor would the other conditions permit of your
marrying her. That is why I want to talk to you."

"Well?"

"Is there any immediate chance of your reconciliation with the Marquis
of Arranmore?"

"None," Brooks answered.

"Well, then," Lady Caroom said, "there is no immediate chance of your
being in a position to marry Sybil. Don't look at me as though I were
saying unkind things. I am not. I am only talking common-sense. What
is your income?"

"About two thousand pounds, but some of that half, perhaps more--goes to
the Society."

"Exactly. It would be impossible for you to marry Sybil on the whole of
it, or twice the whole of it."

"You want me then," Brooks said, "to be reconciled to my father. Yet
you--you yourself will not trust him."

"I have not expressed any wish of the sort," Lady Caroom said, kindly.
"I only wished to point out that as things are you were not in a
position to ask Sybil to marry you, and therefore I want you to keep
away from her. I mean this kindly for both of you. Of course if Sybil
is absolutely in earnest, if the matter has gone too far, we must talk
it all over again and see what is to be done. But I want you to give
her a chance. Keep away for a time. Your father may live for
twenty-five years. If your relations with him all that time continue as
they are now, marriage with a girl brought up like Sybil would be an
impossibility."

Brooks was silent for several moments. Then he looked up suddenly.

"Has Lady Sybil said anything to you--which led you to speak to me?"

Lady Caroom shook her head.

"No. She is very young, you know. Frankly, I do not believe that she
knows her own mind. You have not spoken to her, of course?" "No!"

"And you will not?"

"I suppose," Brooks said, "th