Ella stared at him. "What do you mean?" she asked, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. "Oh! cannot you guess? They brought his last coffin yesterday, and--and--I needn't tell you the rest." "No--no--it cannot be!" cried Ella. "He died on Monday night, and this is only Thursday. By whose orders was this cruel thing done?" "By Dr. Jago's orders." "What right had Dr. Jago----?" "He said it was better so: he said it must be so. Indeed, it was obliged to be." Ella sank back on a sofa, and hid her face behind her hands. It seemed to her that she was baffled at all points. And Aaron took the opportunity to steal noiselessly from the room, as if he had been doing something wrong in it, muttering as he went: "Now Heaven forgive me for a deceitful villain!" The funeral was fixed for the following Monday, Hubert Stone making all the arrangements, under the directions of Mrs. Carlyon, who wished to spare Ella as much as possible. Mrs. Carlyon was greatly taken with Hubert, of whom she had not seen much on her previous visits to Heron Dyke. "What an extremely handsome young man he is," she remarked to herself more than once. "So gentlemanly, too, in manners and appearance. Who would ever take him to be the grandson of a servant?" Hubert's manner towards Mrs. Carlyon was full of deference, which was far from being disagreeable to that lady. But what in Hubert was put down to respectful sympathy might, in the case of a more commonplace and less good-looking man, have been looked upon as an impertinence from one in his position. Clever woman of the world though Mrs. Carlyon was, she had not the slightest suspicion of the flame that was scorching the heart of Hubert Stone, and making his days and nights at once a delight and a torment to him. One of Ella's first inquiries on reaching the Hall was, by whose wish and for what purpose the green-baize doors had been put up which shut in her uncle's rooms from the rest of the house. It was to Hubert the question was put. All he could tell her was that the doors had been put up by the Squire's own express desire; merely to satisfy some whim he had taken on the score of being kept quiet. Ella, who knew how odd and whimsical her uncle had been in many ways, accepted the explanation. Was it due to an oversight, or because the circumstance was not deemed worth mentioning, that Miss Winter and her aunt were not made aware of the presence of any nurse in the house during the last few months of Mr. Denison's illness? The name of Nurse Dexter was certainly never mentioned to them, nor was Ella yet aware of the existence of any such person. Within a dozen hours of the Squire's demise, Mrs. Dexter had packed up her trunks and was gone. She could be of no further use at the Hall, she remarked to one of the maids, as she tied on her neat black bonnet, and, as her services were urgently wanted elsewhere, she thought that the sooner she got away the better.