“The Rector said, Miss Hofland, of the _old_ family,” said the housekeeper pointedly; but neither of the gentlemen spoke. A curious silence fell over the little party, as if no one, except Mrs. Mills, whose views were peremptory, understood what was to be made of this new idea, whether it were of great importance or of no importance at all. It did not end in any additional demonstrations towards Hetty, to whom indeed, in the little lingering illness, which, after all, was no more than a feverish cold, aggravated by the tortures of the imagination which she had been going through, and which Dr. Darrell only partly guessed at, everybody had been as kind as it was possible to be. The housekeeper herself, though so severe and secretly distrusted by all the party, had been very kind to Hetty. If it had been the daughter of the house, as Miss Hofland remarked, there could not have been more pains taken with her. “Certainly they do treat us very well; there is nothing whatever to be found fault with in that respect.” But no doubt Miss Hofland herself looked upon the girl with a different eye. A relation of the old family! The governess at least entertained from the beginning the conviction, formed at once on her entry on her duties, that the old family was very much superior to the new. As for Hetty herself, this little discovery did her more good than the chicken-broth. It raised her failing spirit; it gave the pleasant impulse of a new event. It was indeed, when she came to think of it, no event at all, for though it had not seemed necessary to speak of it to the servants and dependents of the new family, or to the little heiress who was all she was acquainted with of the new family, Hetty herself had been aware from the first that the house in which she was living was the house of her ancestors, and that probably, as she thought, she had far more to do with it, and certainly with the old pictures, than Rhoda had, to whom everything would some day belong. There were no old servants in the establishment who could remember her mother, no sign of any one recollecting that such an unusual name as that of Asquith had once been known at Horton. But now that the discovery had come about in this natural way, it pleased Hetty. She had not written much to her mother since she had been ill; but now, in the pleasant excitement of her discovery, it was the first thing she thought of. As soon as the visitors went away, she got up from her sofa of her own accord, forgetting her dizziness and weakness, and began to write a little. “Such a discovery has been made,” she wrote. “Uncle Hugh is alive still, he is living abroad for his health, and the Rector is only _locum tenens_, as papa was at Retford. He hopes Uncle Hugh may live for ever, but that is not very likely, is it? My cold is a great deal better. I think hearing this has driven it away; not that it makes much difference, but still it makes one feel one’s self more at home, and as