“I will come with you,” she said, in tones that allowed of no opposition. “I must see how he is. He is my mother’s guest, and it was partly my fault that the accident happened to him. He stopped my horse last night, thinking it was running away with me, and one of the keepers fired to frighten him and accidentally hit him. And what he says about his name is not a proof of fever, but perfectly true. Lord Carthew, his friend, had changed names with him in jest; his name is Mr. Hilary Pritchard.” “Well, young gentlemen are up to queer larks certainly,” the man observed, but Stella’s manner did not encourage him to talk, and she walked so fast that it was all he could do to hasten his slow, bow-legged, stableman’s gait sufficiently to keep up with her. Dusk was falling fast as they reached the inn. Before the door stood the light cart in which the doctor had arrived, ready for his return journey. Already Stella was beginning to feel nervous and self-conscious, as she noted the curious glances of the farming folk gathered under the old-fashioned arched entrance to the yard. The bar stood on one side of the building, the coffee-room on the other; the latter room was empty as Miss Cranstoun was shown into it, and she glanced around in some curiosity. It was a low-ceilinged apartment of considerable antiquity, but marred and vulgarized by a cheap varnished paper above the dark wood wainscoting round the walls, by flaming gas-jets, the light from which flickered on colored prints of racing scenes and tradesmen’s calendars, and by a small, mean fireplace, totally inadequate to the size of the room. A man’s gloves and walking-stick lay on the long wooden table, stained with the rings left by glasses and pots, and almost as soon as Stella entered the room a gentleman came in hastily to claim them. The newcomer was short and pale, with brown hair and beard plentifully streaked with gray, and a face redeemed from plainness by thoughtful and penetrating blue eyes. He came in with his hat on, but at sight of Stella he removed it, exclaiming as he did so, in evident surprise: “Miss Cranstoun!” “That is my name. Do you know me?” “I knew you directly, by your remarkable likeness to your mother,” he answered, and then suddenly stopped and blushed very red. For he had seen the look of astonishment in her face, and remembered that every one in Grayling supposed Miss Cranstoun to be the daughter of Lady Gwendolen, a rumor which, as he had never seen the young lady, he was not in a position to discredit, though he often wondered what had been the fate of the infant girl whom he himself had seen conveyed to her father’s house and sent away from thence in the nurse’s care, one winter’s morning eighteen years ago. The mystery was solved now. She stood there before him, a slimmer, more fairy-like, and more refined version of her mother; even her voice, in its rich, soft intonation, recalled to his mind the unhappy Clare Lady Cranstoun.