Everard was not at the Chase this morning, it being his day for collecting the rents of sundry outlying farms, but he might be expected there in the course of the afternoon. CHAPTER XLIX. PAYMENT IN FULL It had been one of those softly brilliant days in late October, which sometimes come as if to haunt us with the ghost of the dead and gone summer. The sun had set in a golden haze, and the amber reaches of the upper sky were darkening slowly as the shades of advancing night crept upward from the east, when Ethel and Everard met face to face in the park. Everard had collected his rents and seen to various other matters, and on his way to the Chase had called at the bank and paid in his day’s receipts. At the Chase he had seen neither Sir Gilbert nor John, but as he had nothing special to see the Baronet about, he had contented himself with leaving a note for him on the library table, having reference to one or two matters in which his employer was specially interested. He was ignorant of the return of Lady Pell and Ethel from The Shrublands when he set off to walk across the park home. Scarcely had Lady Pell had time to take off her bonnet and cloak on her return, before she received a message to the effect that Sir Gilbert would like to see her in the blue parlour at her earliest convenience, and there she presently found both the Baronet and his son. Then to her in turn was unfolded the extraordinary story which had been told by John to his father the night before, followed by a request that she would take upon herself the office of breaking the news to Ethel before either her father or grandfather should see the girl, which her ladyship willingly agreed to do. Into the particulars either of that interview, or of the subsequent one between the astounded girl and the two men we need not enter. They must be left to the imagination of those readers who have followed our narrative thus far. On one point only is it needful to give the details of what passed. It was after Lady Pell had broken her news and Ethel’s bewildered faculties had recovered in part from the shock, that the latter said, “You have told me nothing about my mother, Lady Pell. Is she living or dead?” So wholly unexpected was the question that for a few moments her ladyship was thoroughly nonplussed. Yet the question Ethel had asked was one natural to her sex and age. Whenever she had speculated about her unknown parents, or had indulged in daydreams about them, her silent cry had been, “Mother, where are you? Mother, I want you!” It was not a father whom her heart had gone out in search of. So now, when told that the father from whom she had been separated when an infant in arms, had in some wonderful and as yet unexplained way found her again, the question anent her mother sprang involuntarily to her lips.