"Some other time you shall know all," says Miss Priscilla in the low tone one might adopt if speaking of the last appalling murder. "Yes, some other time," echoes Miss Penelope, gently. CHAPTER III. How Monica studies the landscape. "Is it thrue, ma'am, what I hear, that ye'll be wantin' a maid for Miss Monica?" asks Mrs. Reilly, the cook at Moyne, dropping a respectful courtesy just inside the drawing-room door. "Ryan let dhrop a word to me about it, so I made so bould, ma'am, as to come upstairs an' tell ye I think I know a girl as will come in handy to ye." "And who is she, Reilly?" asks Miss Priscilla anxiously. "She's a very good girl, ma'am, an' smart, an' nate, an' I think ye'll like her," replies cook, who, like all Irish people, finds a difficulty in giving a direct answer to a direct question. Perhaps, too, there is a little wiliness in her determination not to name the new servant's parentage just at present. "I daresay; I place great reliance upon your opinion, Reilly. But who is she? Does she come from the village, or from one of the farms? I should prefer the farms." "She's as tidy as she can be," says Mrs. Reilly, amiably but still evasively, "an' a bit of a scholard into the bargain, an' a very civil tongue in her head. She's seventeen all out, ma'am, and never yet gave her mother a saucy word." "That is as it should be," says Miss Priscilla, commendingly. "You feel a great interest in this girl, I can see. You know her well?" "Yes, miss. She is me uncle's wife's sisther's child, an' as good a girl as ever stepped in shoe leather." "She is then?" asks Miss Priscilla, faintly, puzzled by this startling relationship. "She's that girl of the Cantys', ma'am, and as likely a colleen as ever ye met, though I say it as shouldn't, she being kin-like," says Mrs. Reilly, boldly, seeing her time is come. "What! that pretty, blue-eyed child that called to see you yesterday? She _is_ from the village, then?" with manifest distaste. "An' what's the matther wid the village, ma'am?" By this time Mrs. Reilly has her arms akimbo, and has an evident thirst for knowledge full upon her. "But I fear she is flighty and wild, and not at all domesticated in any way." "An' who has the face to say that, ma'am? Give me the names of her dethractors," says Mrs. Reilly, in an awful tone, that seemed to demand the blood of the "dethractors." "I feel sure, Reilly," says Miss Priscilla, slowly, "that you are not aware of the position your arms have taken. It is most unbecoming." Mrs. Reilly's arms dropped to her sides. "And as for this girl you speak of, I hear she is, as I say, very flighty."