“Oh, an awful cry that we heard sometimes. Janet heard it when she had only been here a week, and she was dreadfully frightened. So was I at first,” said Julia, with dignity. “It has only been for a few years: mamma explained it to me: she said it was the wind in the vacant chimneys that were not used. Oh, Dolff, though she knew very well it was not the wind, and the chimneys were not vacant! Dolff, mamma has said a great many things that are----” “Don’t talk of the mother, Ju--I’m very fond of the mother; and to think she should ever---- Don’t--I think perhaps there might be reasons for our sakes, as she said. The property, you know, came from my grandfather to us. If he were known to have been alive, perhaps--I don’t know so much about business as I ought--perhaps---- It makes my head a little queer to think of all that. She might have reasons.” “If it was simply for _him_, as she said first, to keep him from being sent to an asylum, it could not be for us as well.” “I’m not so sure of that,” said Dolff stroking fondly, but with a very serious face, his youthful very light moustache, light both in color and texture. “I have noticed in ladies,” said quick-witted Julia, “that they like to have a motive, don’t you know--something nice, as if they were always thinking of others, never of themselves; when they do anything, it’s always for their children. Mamma is not like that, to do her justice; when things are going on she says she likes it, not for us only. Oh, Dolff! to think of the parties and romps we have had this Christmas, and people coming to dinner, and _him_ there all the while!” They were both overawed by the thought, and silenced, not venturing even to look at one another, when Julia suddenly cried out, “There’s a party to-morrow, Dolff.” “It mustn’t be,” said the young man; “they must write and say it can’t be.” “What can they say? Nobody is ill; you can’t shut the people out who come to call, and they would see mamma was quite well, and know it was not true. Oh, no; mamma will say we must keep up appearances; and she will be there, looking as nice as possible at the end of the table, and Vicars behind her chair.” “Ju, what did they do with _him_ when Vicars was at all the parties behind her chair?” “He was fastened in, I suppose, the doors all locked. I don’t know. Dolff, suppose he had come downstairs one of these times, as he did last night!” They looked at each other with a shudder. “Perhaps on the whole,” said the young man, “it _was_ better for us that we did not know.”