“I hope you have had the drawing-room properly aired. I never had any confidence in that room. I have known it to be cold,” said Sir John with a look of horror. “Come back to your own room, my lady, for tea. It is the most comfortable in the house.” “That is on his own account, not ours,” said Lady Curtis, as she, in her turn, led Nancy away. The drawing-room, was a very large, noble room divided by pillars, and its magnificence again took away Nancy’s breath. They took her all round to look at the pictures, and then my Lady placed the stranger in a large chair before the fire to rest. Never had any one been so anxious about her, afraid to overtire her. Overtire her! if my Lady only knew? Nancy, vigorous and young, could have carried her conductor about as easily as a child; but she could not carry the load under which she was tottering--the load of concealment and, as she represented it to herself, deception. This overwhelmed her with a feverish incapacity. She was glad when they bade her be still. What agitation was in all her veins! and yet she was happy--wrapped in a strange, delicious, overwhelming, painful dream. Was it her home, really her home in which she was thus reposing, or a house which to-day she would leave for ever? She was not able to answer the question, but sat still there, in the winter afternoon, while the sun was still shining outside, in a trance of strange and mingled sensation, lifted out of herself. The drawing-room did not look towards the front of the house. Its large windows opened into my Lady’s flower-garden, a kind of fairy paradise, Nancy had thought, in which the grass was very green, and where there were still flowers. Arrivals or departures did not disturb the dwellers in this Elysian place; but as they sat together, not talking very much for the moment, for the sake of Nancy who was “resting,” some kind of indescribable wave of sound seemed to rise in the house. Something of wheels, something of quick steps, then a little distant hubbub of voices, then the ring of several doors opened and shut. “Some one calling, I suppose,” Lady Curtis said calmly, “but you must not stir, my dear.” Lucy was near the door. What she heard that roused her curiosity, or suggested to her the impossible occurrence which had really come to pass, it would be impossible to say. Her mind was in a state of high tension and excitement, and this confers a kind of second sight and second hearing. She stole behind the great screen that guarded the room from the possibility of a draught, and softy opened the door. She heard her father’s heavy step come suddenly out of his library, and then a tremulous outcry in his usually placid voice. Lady Curtis had begun to listen too. “What is all that commotion,” she said, “ring, Lucy, and ask?” But Lucy was out of hearing. She had rushed along the corridor to see with her own eyes, and hear with her own ears. “Yes, Sir, it is I; I didn’t write, for I did not know I could get here to-day.