"You require the key, Charlotte," said he. "Shall I give it to you? Margery was my mother's maid, as you may have heard. Her sister, Selina, was maid to the present Lady Godolphin: not of late years: long and long before she ever knew my father. It appears the girl, Selina, was a favourite with her mistress; but she left her, in spite of opposition from all quarters, to marry Mr. Sandy Bray. And has, there's no doubt, been rueing it ever since. There are several children, of an age now to be out in the world; but you heard Margery's account of them. I fear they do pull unconscionably at poor Margery's purse-strings." "Why does she let them do so?" asked Charlotte. Mr. George opened his penknife and ran the point of it through his cigar, ere he answered. "Margery has a soft place in her heart. As I believe most of us have--if our friends could but give us credit for it." "How strange the two sisters should live, the one with your father's first wife, the other with his second!" exclaimed Charlotte, when she had given a few moments to thought. "Were they acquainted with each other?--the ladies." "Not in the least. They never saw each other. I believe it was through these women being sisters that my father became acquainted with the present Lady Godolphin. He was in Scotland with Janet, visiting my mother's family; and Margery, who was with them, brought Janet to that very house, there, to see her sister. Mrs. Campbell--as she was, then--happened to have gone there that day: and that's how the whole thing arose. People say there's a fatality in all things. One would think it must be so. Until that day, Mrs. Campbell had not been in the house for two or three years, and would not be likely to go into it again for two or three more." "Is Bray a _mauvais sujet_?" George lifted his eyebrows. "I don't know that there's much against him, except his incorrigible laziness: that's bad enough when a man has children to keep. Work he will not. Beyond the odds and ends that he gets by the exercise of what he is pleased to call his trade, the fellow earns nothing. Lady Godolphin is charitable to the wife; and poor Margery, as she says, finds her purse drawn at both ends." "I wondered why Margery came to Scotland," observed Charlotte, "not being Lady Godolphin's maid. What _is_ Margery's capacity in your family? I have never been able to find out." "It might puzzle herself to tell you what it is, now. After my mother's death, she waited on my sisters: but when they left Ashlydyat, Margery declined to follow them. She would not leave Sir George. She is excessively attached to him, almost as much so as she was to my mother. That quitting Ashlydyat, ourselves first, and then my father, was a blow to Margery," George added in a dreamy tone. "She has never been the same since." "It was Margery, was it not, who attended upon Sir George in his long illness?"