"Better; Louise is with her. And now to finish dinner; I have an engagement for the evening." Sir Rupert was strangely silent and _distrait_ all through dinner, a darkly thoughtful shadow glooming his ever pale face. A supposition had flashed across his mind that turned him hot and cold by turns--a supposition that was almost a certainty. This striking resemblance of the painter Legard to his dead father was no freak of nature, but a retributive Providence revealing the truth of his birth. It came back to his memory with painfully acute clearness that his mother had sunk down once before in a violent tremor and faintness at the mere sound of his name. Legard had spoken of a veiled lady--Madam Ada, Plymouth, her address. Could his mother--his--be that mysterious arbiter of his fate? The name--the place. Sir Rupert Thetford wrenched his thoughts, by a violent effort, away, shocked at himself. "It cannot be--it cannot!" he said to himself passionately. "I am mad to harbor such thoughts. It is a desecration of the memory of the dead, a treason to the living. But I wish Guy Legard had never come here." There was one other person at Thetford Towers strangely and strongly affected by Mr. Guy Legard, and that person, oddly enough, was Mrs. Weymore, the governess. Mrs. Weymore had never even seen the late Sir Noel that any one knew of, and yet she had recoiled with a shrill, feminine cry of utter consternation at sight of the young man. "I don't see why you should get the fidgets about it, Mrs. Weymore," Miss Everard remarked, with her great, bright eyes suspiciously keen; "you never knew Sir Noel." Mrs. Weymore sunk down on a lounge in a violent tremor and faintness. "My dear, I beg your pardon. I--it seems strange, Oh, May!" with a sudden, sharp cry, losing self-control, "who _is_ that young man?" "Why, Mr. Guy Legard, artist," answered May, composedly, the bright eyes still on the alert; "formerly--in 'boyhood's sunny hours,' you know--Master Guy. Let--me--see! Yes, Vyking." "Vyking!" with a spasmodic cry; and then Mrs. Weymore dropped her white face in her hands, trembling from head to foot. "Well, upon my word," Miss Everard said, addressing empty space, "this does cap the globe! The Mysteries of Udolpho were plain reading compared to Mr. Guy Vyking and the effect he produces upon the people. He's a very handsome young man, and a very agreeable young man; but I should never have suspected he possessed the power of throwing all the elderly ladies he meets into gasping fits. There's Lady Thetford: he was too much for her, and she had to be helped out of the dining-room; and here's Mrs. Weymore going into hysterics because he used to be called Guy Vyking. I thought my lady might be the veiled lady of his story; but now I think it must have been you." Mrs. Weymore looked up, her very lips white. "The veiled lady? What lady? May, tell me all you know of Mr. Vyking."