"Are you quite comfortable at Greylands' Rest?" asked Mary Ursula, unable to repress the suspicion that Mrs. Castlemaine's temper or her young daughter's insolence might be rendering the governess's place a trying one. "Yes--pretty well. That is, I should be," she hastily added, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "if I were quite sure the house was an honest one." "The house an honest one!" echoed Mary Ursula in undisguised astonishment, a haughty flush dying her face. "What do you mean?" "Ah, pardon me, madam!--It may be that I mistake terms--I am not English. I did not mean to say it was a thief's house." "But what do you mean?" Madame Guise looked full at the questioner. She spoke after a short consideration, dropping her voice to a half whisper. "I would like to know--to feel sure--that Mr. Castlemaine did not do anything with that poor young man, his nephew." Mary Ursula sat half confounded--the rejoinder was so very unexpected, the subject so entirely disagreeable. "At least, Madame Guise, that cannot be any affair of yours." "You are angry with me, madam; your words are cold, your tones resentful. The first evening that I arrived at Greylands I chanced to hear about that young man. Mollee, the servant at the inn, came up to help me make the tisane for my little child, and she talked. She told of the young man's strange disappearance, saying he was supposed to have been murdered: and that Mr. Castlemaine knew of it. Ah, it had a great effect upon me, that history; I was cold and miserable, and my little one was ill: I could not get it away from my mind." "I think you might have done so by this time," frigidly remarked Mary Ursula. "But it comes up now and again," she rejoined, "and that keeps alive the remembrance. Events bring it up. Only to-day, when we had not left the dinner-table, some stranger came pushing his way into the room behind Miles, asking Mr. Castlemaine what he had done with Basil's son, young Anthony. It put Mr. Castlemaine out; I saw his face change; and he sent us all from the room." Mary Ursula forgot her coldness. It was this very subject that had deprived her past night of sleep: though she could no more confess it to Madame Guise than the latter could confess. The two were playing unconsciously at hide-and-seek with one another. "Who was the stranger, Madame Guise?" "Mr. Castlemaine called him Squire Dobie. They were together ever so long. Mr. Castlemaine, I say, did not like it; one might see that. Oh, when I think of what might have happened that night to the young Anthony, it makes me shudder." "The best thing you can do is not to think of it, Madame Guise. It is nothing to you, one way or the other. And it is scarcely in good taste for you to be suspicious of Mr. Castlemaine while you are eating his bread. Rely upon it, when this matter shall have been cleared up--if it ever be cleared--Mr. Castlemaine will be found as good and honest as you are."