"Tush! Runaway marriages are as good as others for what I see," avowed Mrs. Penn, with careless creed. "I question if Miss Chandos even knows of the blow that fell on them. I tell you, child, it was a fearful one. It killed old Sir Thomas; it must be slowly killing Lady Chandos. Do you not observe how they seclude themselves from the world?" "They might have plenty of visitors if they chose." "They _don't_ have them. Any one in the secret would wonder if they did. Looking back, there's the disgrace that has fallen; looking forward, there's the terrible blow that has yet to fall." "What is the nature of the disgrace?—what is the blow?" Mrs. Penn shook her head resolutely. "I am unable to tell you, for two reasons. It is not my place to reveal private troubles of the family sheltering me; and its details would not be meet for a young lady's ears. Ill doings generally leave their consequences behind them—as they have here. Harry Chandos——" "There is no ill-doing attaching to _him_," I interrupted, a great deal too eagerly. A smile of derision parted the lips of Mrs. Penn. I saw that it must be one of two things—Harry Chandos was not a good man, or else Mrs. Penn disliked him. "You don't know," she said. "And if you did, Harry Chandos can be nothing to you." Her light eyes were turned on me with a searching look, and my cheeks went into a red heat. Mrs. Penn gathered her conclusions. "Child," she impressively said, "if you are acquiring any liking for Harry Chandos, _dis_-acquire it. Put the thought of him far from you. That he may be a pleasant man in intercourse, I grant; but he must not become too pleasant to you, or to any other woman. Never waste your heart on a man who cannot marry." "Cannot _he_ marry?" "No. But I am saying more than I ought," she suddenly added. "We get led on unconsciously in talking, and one word brings out another." I could have boxed her ears in my vexation. Never, never had the idea of marrying Mr. Chandos crossed my mind; no, not in the wildest dream of dreams. I was a poor dependent governess; he was the presumptive heir to Sir Thomas Chandos. "To return to what I was saying of Lady Chandos," resumed Mrs. Penn. "Rely upon it, I am right: that she has been suddenly afflicted with insanity. There is no other way of accounting for the mystery attaching to that west wing." I sat down to think when she left me. To think. Could it possibly be true, her theory?—were there sufficient apparent grounds for it? My poor brain—bewildered with the strange events passing around on the surface or beneath the surface, this new supposition one of the strangest—was unable to decide. Had somebody come in to say I'd had a fortune left me, I could not have been more surprised than when Hill appeared with a gracious face. Lady Chandos's carriage was going into Marden on an errand—would I like the drive there and back? It might be a change for me.