Emma Brabazon looked across the lawn at the handsome house, and saw a yellow silk screen standing near one of the windows. She laughed. "You can stay here, however, Rose," she said, nodding to the governess. "I will call for you as I come back." Glad that it had so happened, for Miss Rose had insisted on accompanying her rather against her will, Emma Brabazon walked on to Prospect Terrace, as the houses were named, perhaps because they faced a brickfield, and inquired for Mrs. Paradyne. A rather faded lady, sitting in a small upper room, styled by courtesy a drawing-room, rose to receive her. She was tall and slender, with a fair thin face, and bright dark eyes. Her cap was of real lace; her gown, a delicate silk, looked faded, like herself; her manners were quiet and self-possessed. At the first glance Miss Brabazon could not fail to perceive that she was essentially a lady. "It is very kind of you to come," she observed, when they had spoken a little together, Miss Brabazon sitting on the chintz sofa, herself on an opposite chair. "Living in the obscure way my circumstances compel me to live, in these small lodgings, I had not expected of course that any one would call upon me." "But I am very pleased to do it," said Miss Brabazon, "not only because your son is at the college; and I have brought papa's card," she added, laying it on the table. "He has not time to pay visits himself; but he bade me say he hoped you would come to see us, and that we should be good friends." "I visit nowhere," said Mrs. Paradyne, a certain fretfulness observable in her tone. "People do not care to invite those who cannot return it to them. Do not think me ungracious," she hastened to add; "I was not speaking in answer to Dr. Brabazon's kind message, but rather thinking of my past experience." "I hope your son likes the school," observed Emma, rather at a loss what to say. "He likes the school; he does not like his companions," answered Mrs. Paradyne. "No!" exclaimed Emma, taken by surprise. "Why not?" "They seem to shun him; they do shun him, there's no doubt of it. It is making me miserable: I could not sleep all last night for thinking of it. There's scarcely a boy will speak to him, or treat him as a companion;—my dear son, who is so bright and good." Amidst a mass of confused ideas, two in particular loomed out dimly in Emma Brabazon's mind—that Mrs. Paradyne was rather absorbed in self, and that her son was to her a very idol. "Can those boys have betrayed him?" she involuntarily exclaimed. "Betrayed what?" questioned Mrs. Paradyne. And Emma Brabazon blushed to the very roots of her hair. She had been prepared to offer every kind and considerate sympathy if Mrs. Paradyne herself alluded to the past, but certainly had not intended gratuitously to enter upon it. There was no help for it now; and she spoke a few words of the discovery made by Trace—that he had recognised George Paradyne to be the son of a gentleman who had injured his father.