“Bullock,” said Hugh, thoughtfully. “He always seemed an honest, matter-of-fact sort of man. What did he say?” “He said much,” said Mr. Paull. “There is a painful family story. What sort of a girl is this daughter?” “Simple, innocent, good,” said Hugh, shortly, and in as matter-of-fact a manner as he could assume in his perturbation. “Dear me! How strange that bad women so often have good children!” sighed his father. “Is Lady Pym alive?” asked Hugh. “I will tell you exactly what Bullock told me. Sir Roderick was quite different from that which I understand him to be now, when he was young. A roistering ‘young blood,’ as they termed fast young fellows then. There was a handsome girl who was one of the Society beauties. No one noticed Sir Roderick’s admiration. The young lady disappeared one season. Her disappearance caused quite a talk, especially as her relations were reticent on the subject. About two years afterwards, when she is almost forgotten, she reappears as Sir Roderick’s wife. When, how, and where they were married—why, and for what reason the affair was kept dark—no one has ever known.” “But the child?” “The girl seems to have been a young infant when they returned. Well, it appears that Sir Roderick was quite Eastern in his ideas of how a wife should be treated. He took that lively young creature to that place of his, the Pinewood, and shut her up. She saw no one but some of his relations.” “Jealous, doubtless,” said Hugh, thinking back upon the pretty, mutinous face, miniatured in Sir Roderick’s locket. “Well?” “Well, now comes the sad part. Mr. Pym, the brother, who was already a husband and the father of several children, had then, as I daresay you know he still has, an estate about twenty miles distant from Sir Roderick’s. He seems to have divided his time between the two houses. No one knows what took place there. But there was a serious family quarrel. Sir Roderick withdrew from the firm of Pym, Clithero, and Pym, and shut his doors against his whole family. The beautiful Lady Pym no one saw again. Some say she ran away and hid herself abroad: at least, hid herself from everyone but the object of her husband’s jealousy, Mr. Pym. The other rumour is that Sir Roderick shut her up more closely than ever, and that she died and was buried at the Pinewood.” Hugh thought of the chapel in the grounds. “That last story is more likely to be true than the other,” he said. “Yes,” said Mr. Paull; “if, indeed, there is any fact in the gossip at all. Bullock said he felt positive that if Sir Roderick suspected his brother of wronging him in regard to Lady Pym, his suspicion had been utterly groundless. He knows Mr. Pym. He said that no doubt he pitied his young sister-in-law for being immured in so un-English a fashion, and did his best to brighten her life; but that this was all his part in the affair. That Sir Roderick has come to believe so too, is, I should think, proved by his love for his brother’s son.”