"I have, indeed, ma'am. Three funerals in a year, and all three the masters of the house," answered Mrs Grier, shaking her head solemnly. "It isn't often things happen so in a family. But all the same, ma'am, I wish you joy, you and my master, ma'am." "Thank you," said the two thus cheerfully addressed. Eugenia felt almost inclined to laugh; but Captain Chancellor hardly relished the peculiar style of Mrs Grier's congratulation. "It's time the luck should turn again now," he said lightly. "Three is the correct number for that sort of thing, isn't it?" Mrs Grier seemed struck by the remark. "There may be something in that, sir," she allowed. Then one or two others of the head servants, who, having endured the twenty-five years of semi-starvation of the old Squire's rule, had come to be looked upon as fixtures in the place, were in turn introduced by name to Mrs Chancellor. "Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow," said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. "I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir." Dinner--or, more properly speaking, supper--was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room--a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney's letter, and a chat with Rachel about "home," in her own room. These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia's allusion to what she "must have had to go through," had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was "looking far from well," and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years' life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the old _regime_, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.