"What a cross-questioner you are, Corona! but I will answer you. Again it was by her own desire that I presented her as Rose Flowers, which was not an alias, as she explained to me, but a part of her true name. She had been baptized as Rose Anna Flowers, which was the maiden name of her grandmother, her father's mother." Cora might have asked another question, not so easily answered, if she had known the circumstances to which it related, namely: why Mr. Fabian had fabricated that false story of the young governess which he palmed upon his parents; but, in fact, Cora, at that time a child seven years old, had never heard of it. But she made another inquiry. "What became of Rose Flowers after she left us? Did she really go to another place? Who was--Captain Stillwater?" "Mr. Fabian drove slowly and thoughtfully on without answering her question until she had repeated it. Then he said: "Cora, my dear, that is a story I cannot tell you. Let it be enough for me to say, the Stillwater episode in the life of this lady is the ground upon which I forbid my wife to visit her and object to my niece associating with her." "Does Violet know the Stillwater story?" "No; not so much of it even as you have heard. Now, look here, Cora, you think it inconsistent perhaps that I should have brought this woman to Rockhold years ago to become your governess, and now, when she is my father's wife, object to your intimacy with her. In the first instance she has been far, very far, 'more sinned against than sinning;' she had been very imprudent, that was all. She was really the wife, by Scotch law, of the boy she ran away with and then lost. I saw nothing in her case that ought to prevent her entrance into a respectable family, and Heaven knows I pitied her and tried to save her by bringing her to Rockhold. I saved her only for a few years. After she left us--but there, I cannot tell you that story! You must not be intimate with her." "Yet she is my grandfather's wife!" "An irreparable misfortune. I can't expose her life to him; such a blow to his pride might be his death, at his age. No! events must take their course; but I hope he will not take her to any place where she is likely to be recognized. Nor do I think he will. He is aging fast, and will be likely to live quietly at Rockhold." "And I think she also would avoid such risks. She was terribly frightened when she recognized the Dean of Olivet. Was he really her stepfather, the once poor curate?" "Yes. You see while they were lionizing him in the Eastern cities, his portrait, with a short biographical notice, was published in one of the illustrated weeklies, where I read of him, and identified him by comparing notes with what I had heard." "How came he to rise so high?"