The room was scrupulously neat, and tolerably well-furnished, but there was a painful simplicity and provoking fitness and quaintness about the things he saw, that upset his nerves uncomfortably. Every element of furniture was so intensely appropriate, and consistent with all the surroundings; the silence was so settled and sacred, and the noiseless tread of the inmates, as they glided here and there through the passages, almost irritated him. He was soon distracted from these trying observations, however, by the entrance of a dignified haughty-looking woman of about forty years; she was attired in the same simple costume which he had just admired on the young girl in the garden, except that her hair, sprinkled here and there with silver threads, was tucked neatly under an old-fashioned head-dress of muslin that strangely became her handsome face. Still standing a little inside the door-way, this cold, reserved woman looked enquiringly, and waited for Guy to speak his errand, whatever it might be. "I have intruded here," Guy began with not too much confidence in his colloquial powers, "to enquire for a young girl named Josephine de Maistre, who, I am told was admitted here some time ago. I do not know the young lady personally," Guy frankly avowed, "nor have I ever spoken to her; but I have been entrusted with a very serious duty to discharge relative to her, and if it be not encroaching on your rules, I would be glad to interview the young lady." An answer came in cold words, from an unmoved face: "It is not our custom," the stately woman began, "to admit young male visitors to our home without urgent cause for so doing. Show me that you are justified in seeking a deviation from our custom, and I will grant it." Guy fidgeted with his watch chain, and with a little hesitation which shewed how much he dreaded any indiscretion on his part, he asked, "Are you acquainted with any details of Miss de Maistre's life before her coming here?" With the same placid face, his companion answered, "I know everything--she has had no secret from me." "Then I am safe in broaching the subject to you," Guy answered more freely, and accordingly, in as brief terms as possible, he confided his mission to this haughty woman, leaving her then to judge for herself whether the responsibility bequeathed him by dying lips justified or not his intrusion within this quiet home. When he had finished, the set brow of his listener relaxed a little, into an almost involuntary expression of interest.