On the morning following the expedition to Donisbro’, Lady Frederica received an apologetic note from Herr Felsbaden, Sydney’s music-master, regretting his inability to give Miss Lisle her lesson that day, owing to a severe cold. If convenient to Lady Frederica and Miss Lisle, he would come to the Castle on Friday afternoon instead.
The note was sent in to Miss Osric, when Lady Frederica had glanced through it over her early cup of tea, and governess and pupil read it together.
Sydney was looking pale and heavy-eyed this morning, Miss Osric saw, and guessed that Lord St. Quentin had said something to distress the girl. It was a bright sunny morning, with that exhilaration in the air which only a perfect winter’s day has the power to give.
“Suppose, as you have no master coming
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 this morning, we go out for a walk as soon as we have read a little, Sydney dear?” Miss Osric suggested. “It is such a lovely morning, and you look tired. I think the air would do you good.”
“I have a little headache,” Sydney owned, and they set out for their walk at about 10.30.
The frost was thick in the park, and every little twig upon the great bare trees outlined clearly against a sky of pale cloudless blue. Sydney wondered why she did not feel the old exhilaration that a morning such as this would have once awakened in her, even in smoky London.
But if she could not enjoy the perfect morning, they soon met somebody who could!
As they passed the gate of the Vicarage, Mr. Seaton came out, holding Pauly by the hand. The child was in a state of absolutely wild delight, dancing and jumping by his father’s side, and his eyes glittering like two stars under the tangle of red hair.
“Going up the great big ’normous tower!” he informed Sydney, as she stooped to kiss him. “Going to walk miles and miles and miles up ladders, almost to the sky!”
The Vicar laughed and shook hands with both the girls.
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“I have to give some orders about new bell-ropes; ours were rotten, and I’ve had them taken down,” he explained. “And it was an old promise I should take this monkey up the tower next time I had to go there. Do you two feel inclined, I wonder, to come with us, and walk ‘miles and miles and miles up ladders, almost to the sky’?”
Sydney looked at the tower, standing grey and tall outlined sharply on the blue, and then at Miss Osric. “Should you like it? It would be lovely, I think.”
“We should like to go up very much indeed, if Mr. Seaton doesn’t mind the bother of us,” said Miss Osric, and the four went on together to Lislehurst Church at the farther end of the village.
The church itself had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century, when the black oak panelling had been removed as “dirty-looking” and replaced by whitewash, and relieved at intervals by the St. Quentin Arms painted on it in the gaudiest colours. At the same time, the few bits of exquisite stained glass which had survived a visit from the “root and branch” men of the Commonwealth days had been taken away to make room for a complete set of crudely coloured windows, which vexed the soul of Mr.
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 Seaton whenever his eyes fell upon them. But the old tower had been left intact, and was considered by the learned to be one of the finest specimens of fourteenth century architecture left in England.
There was a tradition that the saintly Bishop Ken had once climbed it, and had pronounced the view from the top to be “a foretaste of Heaven.”
Sydney, when she saw the perpendicular ladders tied together, which those who went beyond the belfry chamber were compelled to climb, doubted privately the probability of anyone so old and frail as the non-juring Bishop had grown when he came to Blankshire, having strength or breath to reach the summit!
“You are not frightened, are you?” asked the Vicar, when he had given his orders to the man awaiting him in the belfry chamber, now emptied of its dangling ropes. “Don’t try it, if you feel in the least bit nervous, for it is a stiffish climb!”
To be quite honest, Sydney did not particularly like the look of the many ladders to be scaled, but she would have died sooner than own her fears.
After all, this was not so very much more difficult than going up the ladders in that oast-house
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 in Kent, where they had gone to see the men stamp out a hop-pocket, when the whole family had spent that happy fortnight in a Kentish farm-house last summer. Only then Hugh had been there to help her, and pull her up that awkward step where two rungs had gone from the ladder. Her back was to the Vicar, but Miss Osric saw the sudden wistfulness in the girl’s grey eyes.
“Well, come on, if you really don’t feel nervous,” Mr. Seaton said. “Oh, Hiram,” as the old clerk came stumbling down the ladders at the sound of their voices, “you here? That’s just as well. Now you can go up in front and get the little tower door open for the ladies.”
“Gentleman up the tower now, sir,” Hiram said, touching his battered hat.
“All right; he won’t interfere with us,” the Vicar said. “Now, Miss Lisle, will you go first, and take Hiram’s hand where the ladders cross. Miss Osric, you next. Then Pauly. Hold tight, you little monkey, or I’ll take you down again! I’ll bring up the rear, and then if anybody slips, I’ll catch them.”
The procession started, Mr. Seaton keeping a firm grip of his small son’s blouse the whole time, and calling at intervals directions to the others.
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Up, up they went, clinging to the ladders set perpendicularly against the rough grey walls, worn with the lapse of time. Higher and higher still they went, till Sydney and Miss Osric felt as though they had been climbing for hours instead of minutes.
The elders had no breath for speech, but little Pauly chattered unceasingly. “Did these funny stairs go right up into Heaven? Would there be angels at the top of the tower? Would there be stars? Would there be at least a hole through which Pauly might look into Heaven when he came so near it?”
Sydney could hear his shrill little voice talking on, and his father’s grave tones answering him now and then. As they came higher the echoes caught up the two voices and made the old tower ring with them in a way that sounded strange and very eerie, Sydney thought.
“Getting tired, Miss Lisle?” called the Vicar cheerily, as she set foot on the highest ladder.
His words must have been heard by “the gentleman” of whom old Hiram had spoken, for a square of blue and sunshine opened suddenly above her, and, as she toiled up the final rungs, a hand, whose touch was certainly
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 familiar, grasped hers, and swung her over that last awkward step, where she seemed to hang over a yawning black gulf for a moment, before landing upon terra firma outside the tower.
“Hugh!” She had forgotten everything for the moment, except the joy of seeing him again, but in an instant, like a bitter wind, her cousin’s words swept back upon her—“I forbid you to have anything to do with that young man.”
Hugh could not think why she withdrew her hand, and went back to the little low tower door with a cloud on the face that had been so bright a minute since. “How slow the others are in getting up!” she said.
Hugh watched her uneasily, as she gave her hand to Miss Osric and helped her through the doorway; then proceeded to the same office for little Pauly. Surely it was very unlike Sydney to have nothing to say to him, to be absorbed in these comparative strangers, when he was at her elbow. Surely her manner had changed with extraordinary speed since yesterday.
She on her part had been rapidly considering the situation. It was plainly impossible to go down the tower again the very minute
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 after she had come up it. What excuse could she make that had the slightest sound of reason? None, she was quite aware. Plainly the only thing that she could do was to obey her cousin’s order in the spirit though not in the letter.
She was rather pale, but her voice was steady as she bent over little Pauly, devoting herself to answering his many questions.
Mr. Seaton talked to Miss Osric and to Hugh, who answered him a little absently. His eyes were fixed on Sydney. The Vicar looked from one to the other in a rather puzzled way from time to time, as he did the honours of the splendid view that lay before them.
Glimpses of the Castle showed through its encircling trees, but in summer, Mr. Seaton said, when all the leaves were out, it was completely hidden.
He pointed out in succession the quaint little villages, dotted at intervals about the valley, with some interesting comment upon each. There was Loam, which boasted the finest chancel-screen in the county. Miss Lisle and Miss Osric ought to see it one of these bright days: it was most distinctly worth the trouble of a visit. That tiny church, with a tower that looked as though some giant had sat upon it long ago, was Marston. Did Mr.
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 Chichester remember a humorous account in the papers two or three years back, of a famous “kill” which had taken place in Marston churchyard, when the fox had taken refuge in one of the old stone box tombs, and held the narrow entry, worn by age and weather in the stone, for full an hour?
Styles and Hurstleigh lay out yonder; it was in Hurstleigh that the Manor stood, which a loyal lady of the Civil Wars had defended against General Ireton, till relieved by her husband just as the little garrison were reduced to the last straits.
At another time Sydney would have been immensely interested in the story, but to-day somehow she could not care even to see the place where Madam Courtenay caught the first glimpse of the scarlet mantled horsemen, riding to her succour only just in time.
She could not put herself to-day into the place of the cavalier lady and rejoice with her; ............