She did not attempt to detain him. With the look of awful consternation on her livid face, she turned to come back. I slipped into the dining-room, and sat down in a shady nook by the piano, hoping not to have been seen. The cloth was laid, but no servants were in the room. Only Mr. Chandos, and he stood at a side-table looking into his desk, his back to the room. "Harry! Harry!" Turning at the tones of unmistakeable terror, Mr. Chandos came swiftly to his mother, and took her hand. "The new tenant," she gasped—and I think it was the only time I ever saw Lady Chandos excited; she, who imparted always the idea of calmness intensified; who had reproached Mrs. Chandos with allowing emotion to sway her! "The man by our entrance-gates!" "Yes, yes! what of him?" cried Mr. Chandos, when she stopped from pain. "My dear mother, what has alarmed you?" "It is Edwin Barley." "Who?" almost shouted Mr. Chandos. "Edwin Barley. Here at our very gates!" Whatever calamity the words might imply, it seemed nearly to overwhelm Mr. Chandos. He dropped his mother's hands, and stood looking at her. "Is the agreement signed, Harry?" "Yes." "Then we cannot get rid of him! What can have brought him here? Here, of all places in the world! Chance, think you?" "No. Chance it cannot have been. I told you the new tenant had an ill-favoured face. He——" Mr. Chandos stopped: Hickens and the footman were coming in. The soup was put on the table, and we sat down to dinner. As I moved forward from my corner, quietly and unobtrusively, looking as if I had neither seen nor heard, Lady Chandos turned to me with a start, a red flush darkening her cheeks. But I don't believe she knows, to this hour, whether I had been present during the scene, or had come in with the soup and the servants. The dinner was eaten in almost total silence. Lady and Mr. Chandos were absorbed in their own thoughts; I in mine. The chance words of the agent, "Mr. Edwin Barley of the Oaks," had disclosed the fact that the simple-minded old man who had been so kind to me was dead, and his brother reigned in his stead, lord of all. A rich man, indeed, Edwin Barley must be. I think the servants in waiting must have seen that something was amiss; though, perhaps, the silence did not strike upon them so ominously as it did on my own self-consciousness. You cannot have failed to note—and I think I have said it—that there was little ceremony observed in the everyday life at Chandos. Ten minutes after dinner, tea was rung for. Lady Chandos sat while it was brought in, and the dessert taken away. "Will you oblige me by presiding at tea this evening, Miss Hereford?"