During this short explanation, they had not moved. The speaker stood just within the door, which Miles had closed, Mr. Castlemaine facing him a few paces distant. Madame Guise, waiting for Flora, had turned to the stranger, her face changing to the pallor of the grave. The Master of Greylands caught sight of the pallor, and it angered him: angered him that one should dare to speak of this remarkably unsatisfactory topic in the presence of the ladies of his family, startling and puzzling them. But he controlled his voice and manner to a kind of indifferent courtesy. "If you will take a seat--and a glass of wine with me, Squire Dobie, I will give you all the information I possess on the subject of young Anthony's disappearance. It is not much; it does not really amount to anything: but such as it is, you shall hear it.--My wife, Mrs. Castlemaine. Sophia," turning to her as he made the introduction, "you had finished, I know: be so good as to leave us to ourselves." They filed out of the room: Flora first, with Madame Guise; Ethel and her stepmother following. The latter, who knew something of the Dobie family, at least by reputation, halted to exchange a few words with the representative of it as she passed him. To judge by her manner, it seemed that she had put no offensive construction on his address to her husband: and the probability was that she did not. Mrs. Castlemaine might have been less aware than anybody of the disagreeable rumours whispered in Greylands, tacitly if not openly connecting her husband with the doings of that ill-fated night: for who would be likely to speak of them to her? Squire Dobie, remarking that he did not like to sit with his back to the fire passed round the table and took the chair vacated by Ethel. He was the second son of the old Squire Dobie, of Dobie Hall, a fine old place and property nearly on the confines of the county. In the years gone by, as he had phrased it, he and his elder brother, Tom the heir, had been very intimate with Basil Castlemaine. Separation soon came. Basil went off on his impromptu travels abroad--from which, as the reader knows, he never returned; Tom Dobie, the heir, remained with his father at the Hall, never marrying: Alfred, this younger son, married a Yorkshire heiress, and took up his abode on her broad acres. It has been mentioned that Tom Dobie kept up a private occasional correspondence with Basil Castlemaine, and knew where he was settled, but that has nothing to do with the present moment. Some two years ago Tom died. His father, the old Squire, survived him by a year: and at his death the Hall fell to Alfred, who became Squire in his turn: he who had now intruded on Mr. Castlemaine. "No thank you; no wine," he said, as Mr. Castlemaine was putting the decanter towards him. "I never drink between my meals; and I've ordered my dinner for six o'clock at the Turk's Head. I await your explanation, James Castlemaine. What did you do with young Anthony?"