“And to think that for its master this place has no charm!” he said to himself, wonderingly. His heart beat fast as he opened the gate of the bailiff’s garden. Here all things looked their brightest and prettiest. The birds were singing gaily in the porch. The deep voice of Hephæstus boomed from the hall, and the dog ran out to repel the intruder, but changed his bass growl of menace into a noisy demonstration of delight at sight of the traveller. Even this welcome Eustace was glad to receive. It seemed a good omen. The door stood wide open; he went into the hall, with the dog leaping and bounding about him as he went. No one appeared. There was no sound of voices in any of the rooms. He opened the drawing-room door softly, and went in, prepared to see Helen bending over her books at a table in the window. But Helen was not there, and the room looked cold and dreary. Never had he seen the books so primly arranged, the piano so carefully closed. No cheery blaze brightened the hearth, no flowers perfumed the atmosphere. His instinct told him that a change had fallen upon the pleasant home. He rang the bell, and a fresh country housemaid answered his summons. “Lor’ a mercy, sir, how you did startle me!” she said. “I a’most thought it was ghostes, which they do begin sometimes with ringin’ o’ the bells.” “Is your mistress away from home?” asked Eustace. “Yes, sir, and master, too. They both be gone to Scotland for a month, or more. Didn’t you get the letter as master sent you, sir? I heard him say as he’d wrote to tell you they was gone.” They had gone to Scotland! To find them absent from Greenlands was in itself a wonder to him; but it seemed to him a kind of miracle that they should have gone to Scotland, that country which he was bent upon exploring in his search for the scene of his mother’s sorrows. “What part of Scotland has your master gone to, Martha?” he asked the housemaid. The girl shook her head despondently, and replied that she had not “heard tell.” They were to travel with Mr. Jerningham, she believed. That gentleman had come into property in Scotland, and they were going to see it. This was the utmost she had “heard tell on.” With Mr. Jerningham! What should make that gentleman Helen’s travelling companion? A sudden pang of jealousy rent Eustace Thorburn’s heart as he thought of such a companionship. What could have brought about this Scottish journey? Having possessed himself of Martha’s slender stock of information on this point, Eustace went to the kitchen to question Nanon; but with little more success. The Frenchwoman was voluble, but she could tell him scarcely anything. They were to visit many places, she said, but she knew not where. The names of those barbarous countries had slipped from her memory. It was far, very far; and they were to be absent a month. Oh, but it was dismal without that sweet young lady! Nanon had nursed her as a baby, and never before had they been so long asunder.