"And speak as loud as you can; he is as deaf as a post," adds Constance, not in the least lowering her voice at the announcement, in perfect confidence of the truth of her assertion, shrugging her handsome shoulders as she speaks. Esther goes trembling, and lays her small cold hand in the long bony wreck of muscle, vein, and flesh that is stretched out to her. He gazes at her face with the eager intentness of the purblind. "What is your name?" he asks abruptly. "Esther," she answers, faltering. "Cannot hear a word you say--you mumble so," he says, pettishly. "Go round to the other side; the other ear is the best," suggests Constance, calmly. Esther obeys. "_Esther_," she repeats, speaking unnecessarily loud this time--at the top of her voice, in fact, out of sheer nervousness. "You need not scream at me, my dear, as if I were stone deaf. _Esther_ or _Hester_, did you say?" "Esther." "And who gave it you, pray?" "My father and mother, I suppose." "H'm! Well, you may tell them, with my compliments," he says, with a senile laugh, "that I think they might have found a prettier name to give a young lady, and that the old squire says so. The old squire says so," he repeats, chuckling a little to himself. "I cannot tell them," answers Esther, half-crying. "They are dead." "Oh, indeed!" There his interest in the new comer seems to cease. His white head sinks back on his breast again, and he relapses into slumber. Esther has had neither luncheon, dinner, nor tea--a fact which none of her companions appear to contemplate as possible. _One_ bun has been her sole support throughout the long bitter day--only _one_, because all such buns must be bought with Mrs. Brandon's money. "I daresay you would like to go to bed, dear, you look tired," says Mrs. Blessington, scanning rather curiously Esther's fagged, woebegone little face. "Travelling is so much more fatiguing than it used to be in former days, when one travelled in one's own carriage, whatever they may say. I remember," she continues, with an old woman's garrulity, "Mr. Blessington and I travelling from London to York by easy stages of twenty miles a day, in our own curricle, with outriders. One never sees a curricle nowadays." "I _am_ rather tired," the girl answers, with a faint smile, "and cravingly hungry," she might have added, but does not. "Ring the bell for James to light the candles."