"Well, she does make herself at home!" cried Miss Gascoigne, indignantly, almost before the door had closed. Miss Grey knitted half a row with a perplexed air, and then, as if she had lighted upon a perfect solution of the difficulty, said lightly, "But then, you see, dear Henrietta, she _is_ at home." Home! Through that chilly gallery, preceded by Barker and his wax-lights; stared upon by those grim portraits, till more than once she started as if she had seen a ghost; up narrow, steep stone stair-cases, which might lead to a prison in a tower or a dormitory in a monastery--any where except to ordinary, natural bedchambers. And when she reached them, what gloomy rooms they were, leading one out of another, up a step and down a step, with great beds that seemed only fit to lie in state in, after having turned one's face to the wall and slipped out of weary life into the imagined freedom of the life beyond. Home! If that was home, Christian shivered. "Are you cold? Barker, send Mrs. Grey's maid with her warm shawl. Every body feels the Lodge cold at first, but you will get used to it. Wait one minute," for she was pressing eagerly to the gleam of light through the half-opened nursery door. "My wife!" "Yes, Dr. Grey." As he put his hands on her shoulders, Christian looked into his eyes--right into them, for she was as tall as he. There was a sad quietness in her expression, but there was no shrinking from him, and no distrust. "My wife need never be afraid of any thing or any body in this house." "I know that." "And by-and-by, many things here which feel strange now will cease to feel so. Do you believe this?" She smiled--a very feeble smile; but, at least, there was no pretense in it. "One thing more. Whatever goes wrong, you will always come at once and tell it to me--to nobody in the world but me. Remember." "I will." Dr. Grey leaned forward and kissed his wife in his inexpressibly tender way, and then they went in together. Letitia and Arthur occupied two little closets leading out of the nursery, which seemed spacious enough, and ancient enough, to have been the dormitory of a score of monks, as very likely it was in the early days of Saint Bede's. Phillis, sewing by her little table in the far corner, kept guard over a large bed, where, curled up like a rose-bud, flushed and warm, lay that beautiful child whom Christian had thought of twenty times a day for the last fortnight. "Well, Phillis, how are you and your little folk?" said the master, in a pleasant whisper, as he crossed the nursery floor.