'"Please don't ask me any more questions, miss," she said. "Pray don't. Mr. D'Arcy is a very kind man; I am sure nobody has ever heard me say but what he is a very kind man; but if you do what he says you are not to do, if you talk about what he says you are not to talk about, he is frightful, he is awful. He calls you a chattering old--I don't know what he won't call you. And, of course, I know you are a lady, miss. Of course you look a lady, miss, when you are dressed like one. But then, you see, when I first saw you, you were not dressed as you are now, and at first sight, of course, we go by the dress a good deal, you know. But Mr. D'Arcy needn't be afraid I shall not treat you like a lady, miss. I'm only a housekeeper now, though, of course, I was once very different--very different indeed. But, of course, anybody has only to look at you to see you are a lady, and, besides, Mr. D'Arcy says you are a lady, and that is quite enough." 'At this moment there came through the door--it was ajar--Mr. D'Arcy's voice from the distance, so loud and clear that every word could be heard. '"Mrs. Titwing, why do you stay chattering there, preventing Miss Wynne from getting ready? You know we are going out for a walk together." '"Oh Lord, miss!" said the poor woman in a frightened tone, "I must go. Tell him I didn't chatter--tell him you asked me questions and I was obliged to answer them." 'The mysteries around me were thickening every moment. What did this prattling woman mean about the dress in which she had at first seen me? Was the dress in which she had first seen me so squalid that it had affected her simple imagination? What had become of me after I had sunk down on Raxton sands, and why was I left neglected by every one? I knew you were ill after the landslip, but Mr. D'Arcy had just told me that you had since been well enough to go to Wales and afterwards to Japan. 'I put on the dress and soon followed her. When I reached the tapestried room there was Mr. D'Arcy talking to her in a voice so gentle, tender, and caressing, that it seemed impossible the rough voice I had heard bellowing through the passage could have come from the same mouth, and Mrs. Titwing was looking into his face with the delighted smile of a child who was being forgiven by its father for some trifling offence. As I stood and looked at them I said to myself, "Truly I am in a land of wonders."' VI 'Mr. D'Arcy and I,' said Winifred, 'went out of the house at the back, walked across a roughly paved stable-yard, and passed through a gate and entered a meadow. Then we walked along a stream about as wide as one of our Welsh brooks, but I found it to be a backwater connected with a river. For some time neither of us spoke a word. He seemed lost in thought, and my mind was busy with what I intended to say to him, for I was fully determined to get some light thrown upon the mystery.