The little group round Hetty was thunder-struck by this remark. Miss Hofland hastily took up the eau-de-cologne, with a glance of alarm; and the doctor lifted his head sharply and fixed his eyes upon her, as if with a sudden gleam of hope. “Uncle Hugh!” cried the old clergyman. “My dear Miss Hester--I--this is very surprising. He is Mr. Hugh Prescott, certainly, if you happen to mean that.” “Oh,” cried Hetty, with awakened interest, “then it is Uncle Hugh! Mamma has not heard of any of them for such a long time. She says it is so wrong not to keep up writing, but there are so many of us, and she has so much to do. Then Uncle Hugh is still alive! I will write directly and tell her. She will be so pleased to know.” “Then your mother is----? To be sure!” cried the old clergyman. “Asquith! I ought to have remembered. It is not so common a name but that I might have remembered. Your father was once the curate here.” He looked round upon his companions with a strange look, as if admitting some new possibility from which unknown combinations might arise. “Why, she’s a relation of the family,” he said. The housekeeper had come into the room while this conversation was going on. She was always coming and going; and it was a great grievance with Miss Hofland that she had begun constantly to open the door without knocking, which was an assertion of equality on the housekeeper’s part which the governess could not bear. She came forward now with a cup of chicken-broth for Hetty, and in a moment became somehow the central figure in the group. “Of the old family,” she said firmly, “and that is what I have always thought. I thought from the beginning that there was more than met the eye in that young lady being here.” The doctor stepped forward quickly, giving the woman a hasty, warning look. “I wish I had known before,” he said. “It might have made things easier.” And then he stopped, both in words and action, as if suddenly perceiving either that he had said too much, or that his confusion had betrayed him into something which ought not to have been said at all. “To be sure, I don’t see that it makes much difference,” he said between his teeth. “I think,” said the housekeeper, somewhat severely, “that if you will reflect a moment, you will see that it makes no difference at all.” Miss Hofland, who was entirely in the dark, looked from one to another with bewilderment. “Do you mean that Hetty is a relation of little Rhoda?” she cried.