“No, I suppose I ought to keep it to myself,” said the tutor. She said to herself afterwards that no doubt it was because he was going to leave, because he had been dismissed. People said you must never trust discharged servants. To be sure he was not a servant, he was a gentleman; but still--Agnes tried a little to comfort herself in this way; but Mrs. Parke’s pious hope that nothing might happen, and the tutor’s bold criticisms rankled in her mind. It was she that decided Lady Frogmore to accept the invitation to all the rejoicings over Duke’s majority, though it was not Agnes but Mary that was fond of Duke. “It is right that you should show yourself,” she said to her sister. Mary did not perceive what good showing herself would do, and feared the great dinner, and the return to a place which had so many sad associations (she said). But Agnes pressed so much that her sister, always gentle and so seldom asserting her own will against anyone else’s, at last consented. A visit to the Park was a great step. It was always on the cards that something might awaken smouldering recollections, or throw a new light upon that mystery of the past. At all events, it was with the stirrings of a new hope that Agnes, who managed everything, got her sister afloat on the day before Duke’s birthday, and steered her by the many junctions through half a dozen different trains across country to the Park. It was a troublesome journey, and took the greater part of the day, what with the difficulty of connecting trains, and long waiting at various stations. These delays and waitings were, however, rather good for Mary, who began to be roused out of her usual quiescence, and to ask questions about when they would arrive, and what company they would be likely to find there. “Duke was always my boy,” poor Mary said. A little cloud passed over her face as she spoke, as though a consciousness of something that had interfered between Duke and her had floated across her thoughts. Agnes did not burst out as she would have liked to do into a blast of sentiment in respect to Duke, which was perfectly uncalled for. But she looked disappointed though she did not say it. CHAPTER XXXII.