'Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house--a cloud almost as terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother's death. When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.' 'But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise with my happiness, and with Lesbia's.' My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your grandmother's face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has years of life before her.' 'It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,' said Mary, with her eyes full of tears. 'All such partings are hard, and your grandmother's life has been so lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her life--all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot understand, Lady Maulevrier's life has been a prolonged sacrifice.' 'She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside, and that this secluded life suited her,' said Mary, meditatively. 'I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maulevrier is too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman, to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship's vehement anger when she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?' 'Yes, she was very angry,' Mary answered, with a troubled look. 'I never saw her so angry--she was almost beside herself--said the harshest things to me--talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.' 'Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal secret involved in that man's presence here?' 'I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you fear?--what is it that you suspect?'