Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his
name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian
days--parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency,
who had earned his final step in the peerage by the skilful management of
a little war, and had then incontinently died, leaving his family his
reputation, which was considerable, and his savings, which were
disappointingly small. Lady Cynthia and Lady Georgina were his only
surviving children, and the earldom was extinct.
The sisters possessed a tiny house in Brompton Square, and rented
Beechmark Cottage from Lord Buntingford, of whom their mother, long since
dead, had been a cousin. The cottage stood within the enclosure of the
park, and to their connection with the big house the sisters owed a
number of amenities,--game in winter, flowers and vegetables in
summer--which were of importance to their small income. Cynthia Welwyn,
however, could never have passed as anybody's dependent. She thanked her
cousin occasionally for the kindnesses of which his head gardener and his
game-keeper knew much more than he did; and when he said
impatiently--"Please never thank for that sort of thing!" she dropped the
subject as lightly as she had raised it.
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