"Yes, Legard. He turns out to be the son of Mrs. Weymore; they discovered it last night. He was there in the room, with the most dazed and mystified and altogether bewildered expression of countenance I ever saw a man wear, and May and Mrs. Weymore sat crying incessantly. I couldn't see what occasion there was for the governess and the painter there in that room of death, and I said so to Miss Everard. There's something mysterious in the matter, for her face flushed and she stammered something about startling family secrets that had come to light, and the over-excitement of which had hastened Lady Thetford's end. I don't like the look of things, and I'm altogether in the dark. That painter resembles the Thetford's a great deal too closely for the mere work of chance; and yet, if Mrs. Weymore is his mother, I don't see how there can be anything in _that_. It's odd--confoundedly odd!" Col. Jocyln rumbled on as he walked the floor, his brows knitted into a swarthy frown. His daughter sat and eyed him wistfully. "Did no one ask for me, papa? Am I not to go over?" "Sir Rupert didn't ask for you! May Everard did, and I promised to fetch you to-morrow. Aileen, things at Thetford Towers have a suspicious look to-day; I can't see the light yet, but I suspect something wrong. It may be the very best thing that could possibly happen, this postponed marriage; I shall make Sir Rupert clear matters up completely before my daughter becomes his wife." Col. Jocyln, according to promise, took his daughter to Thetford Towers next morning. With bated breath and beating heart and noiseless tread, Aileen Jocyln entered the house of mourning, which yesterday she had thought to enter a bride. Dark and still, and desolate it lay, the morning light shut out, unbroken silence everywhere. "And this is the end of earth, its glory and its bliss," Aileen thought as she followed her father slowly up-stairs, "the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet and the grave." There were two watchers in the dark room when they entered--May Everard, pale and quiet, and the young artist, Guy Legard. Even in that moment, Col. Jocyln could not repress a supercilious stare of wonder to behold the housekeeper's son in the death-chamber of Lady Thetford. And yet it seemed strangely his place, for it might have been one of those lusty old Thetfords, framed and glazed up-stairs, stepped out of the canvas and dressed in the fashion of the day. "Very bad tastes all the same," the proud old colonel thought, with a frown: "very bad taste on the part of Sir Rupert. I shall speak to him on the subject presently." He stood in silence beside his daughter, looking down at the marble face. May, shivering drearily in a large shawl, and looking like a wan little spirit, was speaking in whispers to Aileen. "We persuaded Rupert--Mr. Legard and I--to go and lie down; he has neither eaten nor slept since his mother died. Oh, Aileen! I am so sorry for you!"