"Yes, I saw him twice. I was prejudiced against him at first, but I grew to like him. I should have liked him very much had he lived; I am sure of it: quite as a brother. Miss Castlemaine of Stilborough liked him: and I think the mystery of his loss has lain heavily upon her." "What prejudiced you against him?" asked Charlotte. Ethel smiled, and told the tale. She gave the history of their two meetings; gave it in detail. The tongue is ready when it has a sympathetic hearer: never a more rapt one than she who listened now. Ethel rose as she concluded it. The disappearance was a subject she did not care to speak of, or dwell upon. Unable to believe Mr. Castlemaine otherwise than innocent, she yet saw that a prejudice had arisen against him. "Then you will not come out with me, madame?" "Many thanks, but no." "What will you do with yourself all day to-morrow?" asked Ethel. "I shall take holiday," replied Madame Guise, with a flush of colour. For on the morrow the whole of the family were going from home, having promised to spend the day with some friends who lived near Newerton. The flush had been caused by Charlotte Guise's self-consciousness. True, she would take holiday on the morrow from her duties; that went as a matter of course; but she was purposing to use the day, or part of it, in endeavouring to make some discovery. These twelve days had she been in the house now, and she was no farther advanced than when she entered it. She had seen Mr. Castlemaine daily; she had conversed with him, dined and taken other meals in his company; but for all the enlightenment she had obtained, or the new ideas she had gathered of the doings of that ill-fated February night, he and she might as well have been far apart as are the two poles. It was not by going on in this tame way that she could hope to obtain any clue to the past: the past to which she had made a vow to devote herself. The morning rose brightly, and the family went off after breakfast in the carriage, Harry sitting on the box with the coachman. Madame Guise was left alone. A feverish desire had been upon her to enter Mr. Castlemaine's room upstairs; the study where he kept the accounts pertaining to the estate, and wrote his letters. In this room he passed many hours daily, sitting in it sometimes late into the night. Charlotte Guise held an impression that if she could find tokens or records of her lost husband, it would be there. But she had never yet obtained so much as a glimpse of its interior: the room was considered sacred to Mr. Castlemaine, and the family did not approach it. Two or three of the women servants had obtained permission to absent themselves that day to visit their friends; and the house was comparatively deserted. Madame Guise, looking forth from her chamber, found all silent and still: the upstairs work was over; the servants, those who remained at home, were shut up in the remote kitchens. Now was her time; now, if ever.