Guy Seymour, too, had his holidays at Beechwood, which seemed a different place with his great, kind heart, his quick appreciation of another’s wants, his unfailing wit and humor, his merry whistle and exhilarating laugh, his good-natured teasing of Auntie Pen, and his entire devotion to Alice, who was rather reserved toward him, but who talked a great deal of him to Magdalen when they were alone, and _cried_ when at last he went away. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE MYSTERY AT BEECHWOOD. A day or two after Guy’s return to New York there came to Beechwood a tall, muscular-looking woman, whom Alice called Mrs. Jenks, and for whom Magdalen could see no possible use. She did not consort with the family, nor with the servants, and Magdalen often met her in the upper hall, and saw her disappearing through the green baize door. It was about this time, too, that Mr. Grey left home for Cincinnati, and the household settled down into a state of quiet and loneliness, which, contrasting as it did with the merry holidays when Guy Seymour was there, seemed to both girls very hard to bear. Alice was unusually restless, and when at last Guy wrote telling of a famous singer who had just appeared in New York, and asking them all to come down for a few days and hear for themselves, she caught eagerly at it, and overruling every objection, won her aunt’s consent to going. Magdalen was to accompany them, and she was anticipating the trip and what it might bring about, for Hester Floyd had written that _Roger_ was in New York. But when the morning fixed upon for their journey came she was suffering with a prevailing influenza which made the trip impossible for her. She, however, insisted upon Alice’s going without her, and so for a few days she was left alone in the house so far as congenial companionship was concerned. Mrs. Jenks she never saw, though she knew she was there; for as she grew better and able to be about the parlors and library she heard the servants speak of the amount of _wine_ she ordered with her dinner, while one of them added in a whisper, “Suppose she should get drunk and there should be a row, wouldn’t we be in a pretty mess. Nobody could control her.”