I don’t think I said anything at all in answer. I said nothing, so far as I know, for a long time after. I sat stupified, feeling my burden all the heavier because I had deluded myself into laying it off a little. Oh me! we had found the heirs that Sarah had thought so much about; but the cloud had not dissolved in this pleasant sunshine. Out of my extraordinary sense of relief, I fell into darker despondency than ever. He was not Milly Mortimer’s brother, nor anybody belonging to her. Who could he be? CHAPTER III. I don’t know very well how I got to Mr. Cresswell’s house. I did manage to get there somehow. I went listlessly through the old fashioned streets I knew so well, and turned down upon that serious old house with its brick front and rows of windows all covered with Venetian blinds. It met the morning sun full, and that was why the blinds were down; but it had a dismal effect upon me, as anything else would have had at that moment. I know how the rooms look inside when the blinds are down; it throws a chill into one’s heart that has known them put down for sadder reasons. I went into the house in the same listless way, like a person in a dream. Somehow I could not take any comfort in those dear young creatures I had just found out. Mr. Luigi, whom I had not found out, returned upon me like a nightmare. Was there no possible way in which this mystery could be discovered? What if I sought an interview with himself and put it to him fairly to tell me who he was? I went into Bob Cresswell’s drawing-room, where the windows were open and the sunshine slanting in through the Venetian blinds. It was rather dark, but a green pleasant darkness, the wind stirring the curtains, and now and then knocking the wood of the blinds softly against the woodwork of the window; a cheerful kind of gloom. Sara’s knick-knacks lay scattered about everywhere on the tables, and there were cushions, and ottomans, and screens, and fantastic pieces of ornamental work about, enough to have persuaded a stranger that Sara was the most industrious person in the world. The creature bought them all, you know, at fancy fairs and such absurd places. I am not sure that she ever took a needle in her fingers; but she said herself she had not the slightest intention of saving her poor papa’s money; and indeed it was very true.