Mrs. Mason scarcely allowed her own to be touched. "We're not used to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep funereal voice. "Mappen you'll sit down." And still holding the girl with her eyes, she walked across to an old rocking-chair, let herself fall into it, and with a loud sigh loosened her bonnet strings. Laura, in her amazement, had to strangle a violent inclination to laugh. Then she flushed brightly, and sat down on the wooden stool in front of the piano. Mrs. Mason, still staring at her, seemed to wait for her to speak. But Laura would say nothing. "Soa--thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter--art tha?" "Yes--and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply. She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising. "How long is't sen your feyther deed?" "Nine months. But you knew that, I think--because I wrote it you." Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis: "Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?" Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter. "Oh! I see," she said impatiently--"you don't seem to understand. But of course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second wife?" "Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away from her the accursed thing!" The massive face was all aglow, transformed, with a kind of sombre fire. Laura stared afresh. "She gave up being a Catholic, if that's what you mean," she said after a moment's pause. "But she couldn't keep to it. When papa fell ill, and she was unhappy, she went back. And then of course she made it up with her brother." The triumph in Mrs. Mason's face yielded first to astonishment, then to anger. "The poor weak doited thing," she said at last in a tone of indescribable contempt, "the poor silly fule! But naebody need ha' luked for onything betther from a Helbeck.--And I daur say"--she lifted her voice fiercely--"I daur say she took yo' wi' her, an it's along o' thattens as yo're coom to spy on us oop here?" Laura sprang up. "Me!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a Catholic and a spy? How kind of you! But of course you don't know anything about my father, nor how he brought me up. As for my poor little stepmother, I came here with her to get her well, and I shall stay with her till she is well. I really don't know why you talk to me like this. I suppose you have cause to dislike Mr. Helbeck, but it is very odd that you should visit it on me, papa's daughter, when I come to see you!"