LOLLY WILLOWES
to Lady Place. There once more arose the problem of how two children of one sex can play nicely with a much younger child of the other. Fancy and Marion played at tea-parties under the weeping ash, and Titus was the butler with a tin tray, Titus would presently run off and play by himself at soldiers, beating martial tattoos upon the tray. But now there was no danger of the youngest member of the party falling into the pond, for Aunt Lolly was always on guard.
Laura enjoyed the visits to Lady Place, but her enjoyment did not go very deep. The knowledge that she now was a visitor where she had formerly been at home seemed to place a clear sheet of glass between her and her surroundings. She felt none of the grudge of the dispossessed; she scarcely gave a thought to the old days. It was as if in the agony of leaving Lady Place after her father's death she had said good-bye so irremediably that she could never really come there again.
But the visits to Lady Place came to a sad end, for in 1905 James died suddenly of heart-failure. Sibyl decided that she could not go on living alone in the country. A manager was found for the brewery, Lady Place was let un-
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