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.

Secretly she felt that such things, and much more, were her due.