To stay in Greylands, or in England at all, might be rather difficult, unless she could get some employment to eke out her means. She knew perfectly well that without her husband's signature, the cautious French bankers and men of business who held his property in their hands, would not advance much, if any, of it to her, unless proofs were forthcoming of his death. She possessed a little income of her own: it was available, and she must concert ways and means of its being transmitted to her in secret, without Greylands learning who she was, and what she was. This might be done: but the money would not be enough to support her and her child comfortably as gentlewomen. "I think I should like to make a sojourn here in Greylands," she observed to M. Bent, cautiously opening the subject, on the first day that Marie could be pronounced convalescent, and was taken down in the parlour for a change. "Why! should you, ma'am!" returned the landlady briskly. "Well, it's a nice place." "I like the sea--and I should wish my little one to remain quiet now. I have suffered too much anxiety on her account to take her travelling again just yet." "Sweet little thing!" aspirated Mrs. Bent. "Her pretty rosy colour is beginning to come back to her cheeks again. I've never seen a child with a brighter." "It is like her--like that of some of our relatives: they have a bright colour," said Madame Guise, who only just saved herself from saying--like her father's. "For her sake I will remain here for some two or three months. Do you think I could get an apartment?" "An apartment!" repeated Mrs. Bent, who took the word literally, and was somewhat puzzled at it. "Did you mean one single room, ma'am." "I mean two or three rooms--as might be enough. Or a small house--what you call a cottage." "Oh, I see, ma'am," said the landlady. "I think you might do that. Some of the larger cottages let rooms in the summer to people coming over here from Stilborough for the sea air. And there's one pretty furnished cottage empty on the cliff." "Would the rent of it be much?" asked Madame Guise, timorously, for a whole furnished cottage seemed a large enterprise. "Next to nothing at this season," spoke Mrs. Bent, confidentially. "Here, John Bent--where are you?" she cried, flinging open the door. "What's the rent of that place----" "Master's out," interrupted Molly, coming from the back kitchen to speak. "Just like him!" retorted Mrs. Bent. "He is out when he's wanted, and at home when he's not. It's always the way with the men. Any way it's a nice little place, ma'am, and I know it would be reasonable."