“No,” he answered, “you are not wicked, my darling; you are the best, the sweetest in all the world.”
“Oh, no, father,” answered Sibyl, “that is not true. I am not the best nor the sweetest, and I wouldn’t like to be too good, ’cept for you. Good-night, darling father.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie returned to the drawing-room.
“You spoil that child,” said the wife, “but it is on a par with everything else you do. You have no perception of what is right. I don’t pretend to be a good mother, but I don’t talk nonsense to Sibyl. She ought not to speak about nurse and governess before servants, and it is disgraceful of her to drag the footman and his concerns into the conversation at dinner. She ought not, also, to boast about doing naughty things.”
“I wish you would leave the child alone,” said Ogilvie in an annoyed voice; “she is good enough for me, little pet, and I would not have her altered for the world. But now, Mildred, to return to our cause of dissension before dinner, we must get this matter arranged. What do you mean to do about your invitation to Grayleigh Manor?”
“I have given you my views on that subject, Philip; I am going.”
“I would much rather you did not.”
“I am sorry.” Mrs. Ogilvie shrugged her shoulders. “I am willing to please you in all reasonable matters; this is unreasonable, therefore I shall take my own way.”
“It is impossible for me to accompany you.”
“I can live without you for a few days, and I shall take the child.”
“Sibyl! No, I do not wish it.”
“I fear you must put up with it. I have written to say that Sibyl and I will go down on Saturday.”
Ogilvie, who had been seated, now rose, and went to the window. He looked out with a dreary expression on his face.
“You know as well as I do the reasons why it would be best for you not to go to Grayleigh Manor at present,” he said. “You can easily write to give an excuse. Remember, we were both asked, and the fact that I cannot leave town is sufficient reason for you to decline.”
“I am going,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. Her eyes, which were large and dark, flashed with defiance. Ogilvie looked at her with a frown between his brows.
“Is that your last word?” he inquired.
“It is, I go on Saturday. If you were not so disagreeable and disobliging you could easily come with me, but you never do anything to please me.”
“Nor you to please me, Mildred,” he was about to say, but he restrained himself. After a pause he said gently, “There is one thing that makes the situation almost unbearable.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“The attitude of little Sibyl toward us both. She thinks us – Mildred, she thinks us perfect. What will happen to the child when her eyes are opened?”
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” was Mrs. Ogilvie’s flippant remark. “But that attitude is much encouraged by you. You make her morbid and sensitive.”
“Morbid! Sibyl morbid! There never was a more open-hearted, frank, healthy creature. Did you not hear her say at dinner that she would not be a flabby good girl for anything? Now, I must tell you that perhaps wrong as that speech was, it rejoiced my heart.”
“And it sickened me,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “You do everything in your power to make her eccentric. Now, I don’t wish to have an eccentric daughter. I wish to have a well brought up girl, who will be good while she is young, speak properly, not make herself in any way remarkable, learn her lessons, and make a successful debut in Society, all in due course.”
“With a view, doubtless, to a brilliant marriage,” added the husband, bitterly.
“I am going to knock all of this nonsense out of Sibyl,” was his wife’s answer, “and I mean to begin it when we get to Grayleigh Manor.”
Mrs. Ogilvie had hardly finished her words before an angry bang at the drawing-room door told her that her husband had left her.
Ogilvie went to his smoking-room at the other end of the hall. There he paced restlessly up and down. His temples were beating, and the pain at his heart was growing worse.
The postman’s ring was heard, and the footman, Watson, entered with a letter.
Ogilvie had expected this letter, and he knew what its purport would be. He only glanced at the writing, threw it on the table near, and resumed his walk up and down.
“It is the child,” he thought. “She perplexes me and she tempts me. Never was there a sweeter decoy duck to the verge of ruin. Poor little innocent white Angel! Her attitude toward her mother and me is sometimes almost maddening. Mildred wants to take that little innocent life and mould it after her own fashion. But, after all, am I any better than Mildred? If I yield to this” – he touched the letter with his hand – “I shall sweep in gold, and all money anxieties will be laid to rest. Little Sib will be rich by-and-by. This is a big thing, and if I do it I shall see my way to clearing off those debts which Mildred’s extravagance, and doubtless my own inclination, have caused me to accumulate. Whatever happens Sibyl will be all right; and yet – I don’t care for wealth, but Mildred does, and the child will be better for money. Money presents a shield between a sensitive heart like Sibyl’s and the world. Yes, I am tempted. Sibyl tempts me.”
He thrust the letter into a drawer, locked the drawer, put the key in his pocket, and ran up to Sibyl’s nursery. She was asleep, and there was no one else in the room. The blinds were down at the windows, and the nursery, pretty, dainty, sweet, and fresh, was in shadow.
Ogilvie stepped softly across the room, and drew up the blind. The moonlight now came in, and shed a silver bar of light across the child’s bed. Sibyl lay with her golden hair half covering the pillow, her hands and arms flung outside the bedclothes.
“Good-night, little darling,” said her father. He bent over her, and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. Feather touch as it was, it aroused the child. She opened her big blue eyes.
“Oh, father, is that you?” she cried in a voice of rapture.
“Yes, it is I. I came to wish you good-night.”
“You are good, you never forget,” said Sibyl. She clasped her arms round his neck. “I went to bed without saying my prayers. May I say them now to you?”
“Not for worlds,” it was the man’s first impulse to remark, but he checked himself. “Of course, dear,” he said.
Sibyl raised herself to a kneeling posture. She clasped her soft arms round her father’s neck.
“Pray God forgive me for being naughty to-day,” she began, “and pray God make me better to-morrow, ’cos it will please my darlingest father and mother; and I thank you, God, so much for making them good, very good, and without sin. Pray God forgive Sibyl, and try to make her better.
“Now, father, you’re pleased,” continued the little girl. “It was very hard to say that, because really, truly, I don’t want to be better, but I’ll try hard if it pleases you.”
“Yes, Sibyl, try hard,” said her father, “try very hard to be good. Don’t let goodness go. Grasp it tight with both hands and never let it go. So may God indeed help you.” Ogilvie said these words in a strained voice. Then he covered her up in bed, drew down the blinds, and left her.
“He’s fretted; it’s just ’cos the world is so wicked, and ’cos I’m not as good as I ought to be,” thought the child. A moment later she had fallen asleep with a smile on her face.
Ogilvie went to his club. There he wrote a short letter. It ran as follows: —
“My Dear Grayleigh, —
“Your offer was not unexpected. I thought it over even before it came, and I have considered it since. Although