Marian occupied the seat behind. She liked it very well, though she would rather have written her letter to Louis. She did not quite hear the conversation before her, and did not much care about it. Marian recognised the old lady only as Agnes’s friend, and had never connected her in any way with her own fortunes. She was shy of speaking in that stately presence; she was even resentful sometimes of the remarks of Miss Anastasia; and the lofty old gentlewoman had formed but an indifferent idea yet of the little beauty. She was amused with the pretty pout of Marian’s lip, the sparkle, sometimes of fun, sometimes of petulance, in her eye; but Marian would have been extremely dismayed to-day had she known that she, and not Agnes, was the principal object of Miss Anastasia’s visit, and was, indeed, about to be put upon her trial, to see if she was good for anything. At all events, she was quite at ease and unalarmed now. They drove along in silence for some time after this--passing through the village and past the Park gates. Then Miss Anastasia took a road quite unfamiliar to the girls--a grass-grown unfrequented path, lying under the shadow of the trees of Winterbourne. She did not say a word till they came to a sudden break in the trees, when she stopped her ponies abruptly, and fixed a sorrowful gaze upon the Hall, which was visible, and close at hand. The white, broad, majestic front of the great house was not unlike a funeral pile at any time; now, with white curtains drawn close over all its scarcely perceptible windows, still veiled in the pomp of mourning, without a gleam of light or colour, in its blind, grand aspect, turning its back upon the sun--there was something very sadly imposing in the desolated house. No one was to be seen about it--not even a servant: it looked like a vast mausoleum, sacred to the dead. “It was very well for him,” said Miss Anastasia with a sigh, “very well. If it were not so pitiful a thing to think of, children, I could thank God.” But as the old lady spoke, the tears stood heavy in her eyes. This was very dreadful, very mysterious, altogether beyond comprehension to Marian. She was glad to turn her eyes away from the house with dislike and terror--it had been Louis’s prison and place of suffering, and not a single hope connected with the Hall of Winterbourne was in Marian’s mind. She drew back from Miss Rivers with a shudder--she thought it was the most frightful thing in existence to thank God because this young man had died.