The Mrs. Burton referred to by Sir Gilbert was housekeeper at the Chase, having held that position since the death of the second Lady Clare. She was a widow, middle-aged, thin, prim, and as upright as a dart, and was still able to pride herself on the slimness of her figure. Her manners pertained to what might be termed the severely genteel school. She was careful to impress upon everyone with whom she was brought into contact that she was “a lady by birth,” but it was a statement which she evidently intended people to accept unfortified by any particulars of her parentage and early history, with regard to which, indeed, it was noticed that she was studiously reticent. Her peculiarities notwithstanding, she made an excellent housekeeper, and the baronet valued her accordingly. It had not been often in the course of her uneventful existence that anyone had succeeded in more than faintly stirring the chilly shallows of Mrs. Burton’s gentility, but this morning she had been more nearly startled out of her propriety than had happened to her since her advent at Withington Chase. Sir Gilbert had sent for her immediately after breakfast, and without a word of preface, and with no more apparent concern than if he were giving his orders about dinner, had said: “Mrs. Burton, I am expecting two people to luncheon to-day whom you have never yet seen, and probably never as much as heard of. They are my daughter-in-law and my grandson. After luncheon I should like them to be shown by you over the house. Mr. Lisle will accompany them in my place. So if you will kindly hold yourself in readiness and meanwhile give orders for the shutters of the unused rooms to be thrown open, and for an article or two of furniture here and there to be uncovered, I shall feel obliged.” Mrs. Burton had issued the requisite orders and had then shut herself up in her room to think over the astounding news which had just been told her, while endeavouring to regain her much-disturbed equanimity. She was one of those women who seem to have a special faculty for ferreting out every particular, or incident of consequence in the career of anyone in whom they are interested, and she had flattered herself that there was no fact of any moment in the life of Sir Gilbert with which she was not already acquainted. To-day, however, he had proved to her how egregiously she had been mistaken. A daughter-in-law and a grandson, and she, Felicia Burton, not to have known of their existence! She felt as if Sir Gilbert had put a grievous personal affront upon her.