Putting aside the difficulties attending the instruction and management of Miss Flora, Madame Guise found the residence at Greylands' Rest not at all an unpleasant one. The routine of the day was this. Breakfast--which meal was taken all together in the red parlour--at eight o'clock. Flora until dinner-time; half-past one. Ethel's music lesson of an hour, was given during the afternoon: Flora being generally out with her mamma or racing about the premises and grounds on her own account. Tea at five; one hour given to Flora afterwards, to help her to prepare her lessons or exercises for the following day: and then Madame's duties were over. Little did Mr. Castlemaine imagine that the pleasant, though always sad young lady, who was so efficient an instructress for the young plague of the house, was his ill-fated nephew's widow. He was somewhat taken aback when he heard that Madame Guise had placed her child at the Grey Nunnery, and knitted his brow in displeasure. However, the child's being there, so long as the ladies were, could make no difference to him; it was the Sisterhood he wanted away, not the child. Charlotte Guise never went out during the day--except on Sundays to church. Ethel would try to coax her abroad in the afternoons, but hitherto she had not succeeded. In the evening, after Flora was done with, Madame would put her bonnet on and stroll alone: sometimes to the Nunnery to see her child, whose enforced absence only made her the dearer to her mother's heart. "Why will you not go out with me?" asked Ethel one afternoon, when she and Madame Guise rose from the piano in the red parlour--for the old square piano in the schoolroom was for the benefit of the unskilled fingers of Miss Flora only. "See how pleasant everything looks! It is quite spring weather now." "Yes, it is spring weather, but I feel a little cold always, and I don't care to go," answered Madame Guise. "I will go when summer comes." They sat down before the French window, Ethel opening it to the pleasant air. Madame Guise had been wishing ever since she was in the house to put a question to this fair young girl, whom she had already learned to love. But she had not yet dared to do it: conscience was always suggesting fears of her true identity being discovered: and now that she did speak it was abruptly. "Have any tidings been heard yet of the young man said to have been lost in the Friar's Keep?" "No, not any," replied Ethel. "Is it true, think you, that he was killed?" Ethel Reene flushed painfully: she could not forget what she had overheard John Bent say. "Oh, I hope not. Of course, his disappearance is very strange; more than strange. But if--if anything did happen to him that night, it might have been by accident." "I heard about the matter when I was at the Dolphin," observed Madame Guise, as if wishing to account for speaking of it. "It took much hold upon my interest; it seemed so strange and sad. Did you ever see that Mr. Anthony, Ethel?"