"He! Other harm!" reiterated Janet, something like indignation at Maria's question mingling with surprise in her tone. "Don't you know that it was he who gambled away Ashlydyat? After that second marriage of his, he took to worse and worse courses. It was said that his second wife proved a match for him, and they lived together like two evil demons. All things considered, it was perhaps a natural sequence that they should so live," added Janet, severely. "And in the end he cut off the entail and gambled away the estate. Many years elapsed before the Godolphins could recover it." Maria was longing to put a question. She had heard that there were other superstitious marvels attaching to Ashlydyat, but she scarcely liked to mention them to the Miss Godolphins. George never would explain anything: he always turned it off, with laughing raillery. "You--think--that Ashlydyat will pass away from the Godolphins, Janet?" Janet shook her head. "We have been reared in the belief," she answered. "That the estate is to pass finally away from them, the Godolphins have been taught to fear ever since that unhappy time. Each generation, as they have come into possession, have accepted it as an uncertain tenure: as a thing that might last them for their time, or might pass away from them ere their earthly sojourn was completed. The belief was; nay, the tradition was; that so long as a reigning Godolphin held by Ashlydyat, Ashlydyat would hold by him and his. My father was the first to break it." Janet had taken up her dress, and sat down on a dusty, faded bench, the only article of furniture of any description that the square room contained. That strangely speculative look--it was scarcely an earthly one--had come into her eyes: and though she answered when spoken to, she appeared to be lost in sad, inward thought. Maria, somewhat awed with the turn the conversation had taken, with the words altogether, stood against the opposite window, her delicate hands clasped before her, her face slightly bent forward, pale and grave. "Then, do you fear that the end for the Godolphins is at hand?" "I seem to _see_ that it is," replied Janet. "I have looked for it ever since my father left Ashlydyat. I might say--but that I should be laughed at more than I am for an idealist--that the strangers to whom he resigned it in his place, would have some bearing upon our fall, would in some way conduce to it. I think of these things ever," continued Janet, almost as if she would apologize for the wildness of the confession. "They seem to unfold themselves to me, to become clear and more clear: to be no longer fanciful fears darting across the brain, but realities of life." Maria's lips slightly parted as she listened. "But the Verralls have left Ashlydyat a long while?" she presently said.