"How? What do you mean, Isabella?" asked Lucille, in her impulsive way. "You are so cold and reserved. Are all Englishwomen so? It is so difficult to drag things out of you." "Because there is nothing to drag." "Yes, there is. I want to know why it was such a special misfortune that Mr. Howard should never have known his mother. You may not be interested in him, but I am. My mother is so fond of him--my father trusted him." "Ah!" "There, again," cried Lucille, with a laugh of annoyance. "You say 'Ah!' and it means nothing. I look at your face and it says nothing. With us it is different--we have a hundred little exclamations--look at mother when she talks--but in England when you say 'Ah!' you seem to mean nothing.." Lucille laughed and looked at Isabella, who only smiled. "Well?" "Well," answered Isabella, reluctantly, "if Mr. Howard's mother had lived he might have been a better man." "You call him Mr. Howard," cried Lucille, darting into one of those side issues by which women so often reach their goal. "Do you call him so to his face?" "No." "What do you call him?" asked Lucille, with the persistence of a child on a trifle. "Dick." "And yet you do not like him?" "I have never thought whether I like him or not--one does not think of such questions with people who are like one's own family." "But surely," said Lucille, "one cannot like a person who is not good?" "Of course not," answered the other, with her shadowy smile. "At least it is always so written in books." [Illustration: "YOU SAY 'AH!' AND IT MEANS NOTHING. I LOOK AT YOUR FACE AND IT SAYS NOTHING."] After this qualified statement Isabella sat with her firm white hands clasped together in idleness on her lap. She was not a woman to fill in the hours with the trifling occupation of the work-basket, and yet was never aught but womanly in dress, manner, and, as I take it, thought. Lucille's fingers, on the contrary, were never still, and before she had lived at Hopton a fortnight she had half a dozen small protegees in the village for whom she fashioned little garments. It was she who broke the short silence--her companion seemed to be waiting for that or for something else. "Do you think," she asked, "that mother trusts Mr. Howard too much? She places implicit faith in all he says or does--just as my father did when he was alive." Isabella--than whom none was more keenly alive to my many failings--paused before she answered, in her measured way: "It all depends upon his motive in undertaking the management of your affairs." "Oh--he is paid," said Lucille, rather hurriedly. "He is paid, of course." "This house is his; the land, so far as you can see from any of the windows, is his also. He has affairs of his own to manage, which he neglects. A mere salary seems an insufficient motive for so deep an interest as he displays." Lucille did not answer for some moments. Indeed, her needlework seemed at this moment to require careful attention.