‘Ah, there’s few houses without a history; few women of my age that haven’t seen a good deal of family troubles and family secrets. The best thing an old woman can do is to hold her tongue. That’s what my daughter-in-law’s always telling me. “Least said, soonest mended.”’ ‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘the dowager has been warned against being over-communicative.’ Contemplating the room more at his leisure now than he had done from outside, he perceived a picture hanging over the chimney-piece which he had not noticed before. It was a commonplace portrait enough, by some provincial limner’s hand, the portrait of a young woman in a gipsy hat and flowered damask gown—a picture that was perhaps a century old. ‘Is that picture over the chimney a portrait of one of your son’s family, ma’am?’ asked Maurice. ‘Yes. That’s my husband’s mother, Justina Trevanard.’ Justina. The name startled him—so uncommon a name—and to find it here in the Trevanard family. ‘That’s a curious name,’ he said, ‘and one which recalls a person I met under peculiar circumstances. Have you had many Justinas in the Trevanard family since that day?’ ‘No, there was never anybody christened after her.’ ‘I met your granddaughter in the garden the other night, Mrs. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, determined to find out whether this blind woman was a friend to Muriel, ‘and I was grieved to see her in so sad a condition.’ ‘Muriel. Yes, poor girl, it’s very sad—sad for all of us,’ answered the old woman, with a sigh, ‘saddest of all for her father. He was so proud of that girl—spared no money to make her a lady, and now he can’t bear to see her. It wounds him too deep to see such a wreck. Yet he won’t have her away from the house. He likes to know that she’s near him, and as well cared for as she can be—in her state.’ ‘It must have been a great sorrow that so changed her?’ ‘It was more sorrow than she could bear, poor child; though others have borne harder things.’ ‘She was crossed in love, her brother told me.’ ‘Yes, yes—crossed in love, that was it. The young man that she loved died young, and she was told of it suddenly. The shock turned her brain. She had a fever, and every one thought she was going to die. She got the better of the illness, but her senses never came back to her. She’s quite harmless, as you’ve seen, I dare say; but she has her fancies, and one is to think that the young man she was fond of is still alive, and that he’ll keep his promise and come back to her.’ Maurice told Mrs. Trevanard of his first night at Borcel End, and the intrusion which had shortened his slumbers.