nt fiction enabled the girl to
regard Mr. and Mrs. Fenley as her "uncle" and "aunt," and the tacit
relationship thus established served to place the financier and his
"niece" on a footing of affectionate intimacy. Of late, however,
Sylvia had been aware of a splitting up of the family into armed
camps, and the discovery, or intuition, that she was the cause of the
rupture had proved irksome and even annoying.

Mortimer Fenley had made no secret of his desire that she should marry
his younger son. When both young people, excellent friends though they
were, seemed to shirk the suggestion, though by no means actively
opposing it, Fenley was angered, and did not scruple to throw out
hints of coercion. Again, the girl knew that Hilton Fenley was a rival
suitor, and meant to defy his father's intent with regard to Robert.
Oddly enough, neither of the young men had indulged in overt
love-making. According to their reckoning, Sylvia's personal choice
counted for little in the matter. Robert seemed to assume that his
"cousin" was merely waiting to be asked, while Hilton's attitude was
that of a man biding his time to snatch a prize when opportunity
served.

Sylvia herself hated the very thought of matrimony. The only married
couples of her acquaintance were either hopelessly detached, like
Fenley and his wife, or uninteresting people of the type which the
village barber had etched so clearly for Trenholme's benefit.
Whatsoever quickening of romance might have crept into such lives had
long yielded to atrophy. Marriage, to the girl's imaginative mind, was
synonymous with a dull and prosy middle age. Most certainly the vague
day-dreams evoked by her reading of books and converted into alluring
vistas by an ever-widening horizon were not sated by the prospect of
becoming the wife of either of the only two young men she knew.

There was a big world beyond the confines of Roxton Park. There were
interests in life that called with increasing insistence. In her heart
of hearts she had decided, quite unmistakably, to decline any
matrimonial project for several years, and while shrinking from a
downright avowal of her intentions, which her "uncle" would have
resented very strongly, the fact that father and sons were at daggers
drawn concerning her was the cause of no slight feeling of dismay,
even of occasional moments of unhappiness.

She had no one to confide in. For reasons beyond her ken Mortimer
Fenley had set his face against