Of her effecting an entrance into Chandos as companion, Edwin Barley knew nothing. After she was settled there she looked out for him, and waylaid him in the grounds. While Mr. Edwin Barley had been ignorant of her life and doings for some years, there was no doubt she had contrived to keep herself acquainted with his, including his removal to the gates of Chandos. In this interview with him, which I had partially overheard—and I now think it was the first she held with him—she told him what her object was: the finding out all there was to be found out about George Heneage. With the change in Mrs. Penn's person and the remarkable change in her hair, Mr. Edwin Barley had some difficulty in believing it to be Charlotte Delves. The hair was an unhappy calamity. Mrs. Penn, beguiled by fashion and confidential advertisements to wish to turn her light flaxen hair to gold colour, had experimented upon it: the result was not gold, but a glowing, permanent, scarlet-red. She told him she was watching at Chandos for his sake. Mr. Edwin Barley, an implacable man when once offended, was cool to her, declining, in a sense, to accept her services. If she made discoveries that could assist in the tracking of George Heneage, well and good; she might bring them to him: and so the interview ended. Mrs. Penn might have made a discovery to some purpose but for two things. The one was that she was a real coward, and believed the ghost haunting the pine-walk to be a ghost: the other was that she took up a theory of her own in regard to the west wing. She assumed that Lady Chandos had become mad; to this she set down all the mystery enacted in it; and this view she imparted to Mr. Edwin Barley. He neither asked her to bring tales to him, nor encouraged her to do it; if she worked, she worked of her own accord; and his doors remained closed to her. At least, Mrs. Penn did not choose to try whether they would be open. Until this day: and her entering of them now could not be said to be of her own seeking. She sat taking her luncheon, cold partridge and sherry. Mr. Barley entered in silence, and stood with a dark expression on his lips. Charlotte knew it of old, and saw that something had not pleased him. Things had very much displeased him; firstly, the escape of the long-sought-for prisoner; secondly, Madam Charlotte's doings at Chandos. Mr. Edwin Barley might have winked at the peering and prying, might have encouraged the peeping into letters: but to steal things (even though but in appearance) he very much disapproved of, especially as _he_ was looked upon as having instigated her. "What's the matter, Mr. Barley?" asked Charlotte, helping herself to some more partridge. "He _is_ there, is he not?" "Who?" "George Heneage. In the west wing." "Yes, he's there. I've seen him."