"You lack enterprise, Mrs. Carlyon. I am afraid that you would never do for a special correspondent. Do you expect to make a long stay in London this time?" he asked, turning to Ella. "We intend starting for the Continent the day after tomorrow," answered Mrs. Carlyon. "You had better come and dine with us tomorrow evening: there will be no one but ourselves and Mr. Bootle." "I shall be very happy to do so," replied Conroy. "What place are you going to make your head-quarters while you are away?" "I had some thoughts of San Remo, but we shall probably be birds of passage and not stay long in any one place." Conroy saw that Ella was silent, and guessed the parting with her uncle had been a sad one. What he did not know was, how sweet his presence and company were to her. She had been thinking of him that very day--thinking of him sadly as of one whom she might never see again; and now he was here, sitting opposite to her. What rare chance had brought him?--She did not talk much, she was satisfied to hear his voice and see his face; at present she craved nothing more. The journey she so much dreaded had all at once been invested with a charm, with an unexpected sweetness, which she never tried to analyse: enough for her that it was there. Conroy saw the ladies into their carriage at the London terminus, and bade them goodbye till the following evening. Then he lighted a cigar and set out to walk to his rooms in the Adelphi. He was in a musing mood, debating some question with himself as he walked along. "Shall I tell Mrs. Carlyon a certain secret, or shall I not?" he thought. "Would she keep it to herself? No, no; better be on the safe side," he presently decided: "and the time is hardly ripe to tell it to anyone. What would Squire Denison say if it were whispered to him?" On this very evening, while these ladies were on their way to London, a strange thing happened at Heron Dyke. It was about eight o'clock. Fitch the saddler had come up from Nullington about some little matter of business, and Aaron Frost sent one of the housemaids to fetch him a certain whip that was hanging up in the hall. As Martha left the room with her candle she met her fellow-servant, Ann, and the latter turned to accompany her. The girls never cared to go about the big house singly after dark. They went along chattering merrily, and thinking of anything rather than unpleasant subjects. Martha was repeating a ludicrous story just told in the kitchen by the saddler, and could hardly tell it for laughing. As in many old mansions, round three sides of the entrance-hall there ran an oaken gallery, some twenty feet above the ground, from which various doors gave access to different parts of the house. This gallery was reached from the hall by a broad and shallow flight of stairs. "How cold this place always strikes one," exclaimed Ann, as they entered the hall. "It would want many a dozen of candles to light it up properly," remarked Martha.