Juanita accepted her cousin’s account of what he had heard and read at St. Heliers, as the closing of his researches in the history of the Strangways. The sister’s death in a shabby exile remained to be traced; but there was no light to be expected there; and Juanita felt that she must now submit to surrender her superstition about that evil race. It was not from them the blow had come. The murderer had to be hunted for in a wider range, and the quest would be more difficult than she had thought. She was not the less intent upon discovery because of this difficulty. “I have all my life before me,” she told herself, “and I have nothing to live for but to see his murderer punished.” It had been Juanita’s especial desire that the Morningsides and the Grenvilles should be invited to the Priory just as they had been in Sir Godfrey’s lifetime—that all the habits of the household should be as he had willed them when his bodily presence was there among them, as he was now in the spirit, to Juanita’s imagination. She thought of him every hour of the day, and in all things deferred to his opinions and ideas, shaping the whole course of her life to please him who was lying in that dark resting-place where there is neither pain nor pleasure. When November came, however, and with it the group of Grenvilles, nurses and nursery governess, and the Morningsides with valet and maid, it seemed to Juanita as if the wild companions of Comus or a contingent from Bedlam had invaded the sober old Priory. Those loud voices in the hall, that perpetual running up and down and talking and laughing upon the staircase; the everlasting opening and shutting of doors; the roll of carriage-wheels driving up to the door a dozen times in a day; the bustle and fuss and commotion which two cheerful families in rude health can contrive to make in a house where they feel themselves perfectly at home—all these things were agonizing to the mourner who had lived in silence and shadow from the hour of her loss until now. Happily, however, Lady Jane was there to take all the burden off those weary shoulders; and Lady Jane in the character of a grandmother was in her very fittest sphere. Between her ladyship and the housekeeper all arrangements were made, and every detail was attended to without inflicting the slightest trouble upon Juanita. “You shall see just as little of them all as you like, dear,” said Lady Jane. “You can breakfast and lunch in your morning-room, and just come down to dinner when you feel equal to being with us, and then you will see the darlings at dessert. I know _they_ will cheer you, with their pretty little ways. Such loving pets as they are too, and so full of intelligence. Did I tell you what Johnnie said yesterday, at lunch?” “Yes, dear Lady Jane, you did tell me. It was very funny,” replied Juanita, with a faint smile.