The arrangements were not long of being completed. It appeared that little Miss Rotherham lived something of a cloistered life in the great old house. Her mother was away at the other end of the world, and had business or something else to enforce her absence for a year or more, during which time her little girl was under very close regulations. She was not to go outside of the park, except now and then for a drive. She was never to be left alone. If Miss Hofland, the governess, was off duty, her young companion was to be with her, and no visitors or any communication from without were to be allowed. “Extraordinary precautions to be adopted for a child of ten,” Mr. Rossmore said. “My brother says there are sufficient family reasons, but does not explain. Except this mystery, I don’t know that there is anything to find fault with. The mother is an American. I don’t know that this fact affords any explanation. Still their manners are a little different from ours.” “Not in the way of shutting up their children,” said Mr. Asquith thoughtfully. Said Mary, “These regulations don’t trouble me. A child of ten is best at home. There is plenty of room for her to walk and play in the park, oh, plenty. You remember, Harry----” There is no telling what recollections might have been called up had not Mr. Rossmore’s presence checked them. She paused a little, musing, excited, seeing before her every glade and hollow. “Perhaps the lady is a woman with a system,” she said. “She may have some plan of her own for making children perfect. I wonder if Mr. Rossmore knows, Harry--if he knows whether she is related to the old family?” Mary did not know why it was that she made this inquiry timidly through her husband, as it were at secondhand, instead of inquiring simply as otherwise she should have done. Mr. Rossmore could give no answer to the question. He knew nothing about the Prescotts. And it was so long since they had heard anything, and so much may happen in a dozen years. She said nothing of her relationship, nor that it was her home to which the child was thus going as a stranger. If all were strangers there now, what did it matter? To think that the family had thus disappeared out of Horton gave her a pang. Rotherham? She had never once heard the name before. They must be entirely strangers, foreigners, not even belonging to the neighbourhood. Since the old race had died away, perhaps it was better that it should be so. And it was just as well for Hetty that, since she was going to Horton, she should be kept in this almost monastic seclusion. For Asquith is not a common name, and people might inquire and insist on knowing who Miss Asquith was. It was better, certainly better, that Hetty should not run the risk of cross-examination from old friends. All things were for the best. And, after all, it was only for a year.