“If there was any serious reason why you should not come into my house, I think you would not have come,” she said, with meaning. Nancy did not reply--her thoughts were occupied by a wholly different preventing cause from that which was in Lady Curtis’s thoughts; but neither did she quail from the look, which she did not understand. The impulse was strong upon her to tell everything, to go no further, to disclose the whole story now. “After to-day,” she said, with her lips quivering, “I meant, if you would listen, to tell you everything about me. But perhaps, I thought to myself, you would not like me then--perhaps you would be angry; and I thought I might give myself first this one day.” “Poor child!” said Lady Curtis, half smiling. “It cannot be very great wickedness, at which you think I would be angry, which you tell with such an innocent face. Hush, hush!” she added, “no more of this, here is Lucy. You shall have your day, and tell me after. Before her not a word.” Was Lady Curtis afraid of Lucy _too_? She came in looking as she always did, not suspicious perhaps, but _as if she knew_--did she know anything? and shook hands with Nancy. “You are showing Mrs. Arthur your own room first, mamma; you are telling her exactly what you expect to be said, and coaxing her to praise it. That is what you always do; but papa wishes her to be brought to the library. No, here he is coming after me,” said Lucy, as a heavy step came towards the door. Nancy was standing up, tremulous and shaken, her lips with still a quiver in them, the tears not gone out of her eyes, when Sir John came in. He came up to her holding out his large, soft, old man’s hand. “You need not introduce me, Lucy. I know this lady already. She was very kind to me, as I told you. I assure you that to allow a young lady, and one whom I should have been so happy to serve, to take so much trouble for me, was much against my liking. But my excuse is one we must all come to, even the fairest. When a man is old--” “I was so very glad,” said Nancy, in a low tone, and her eyes, with the moisture in them, looked so appealing that Sir John’s heart was touched. He gave a look round, lifting his heavy eyelids to see if there was anything visible that could account for this emotion. Then, seeing that his wife also showed signs of fellow-feeling, he concluded that the poor young widow (as he supposed her) had been telling her story to my lady’s sympathetic ear.