And the effect was, that she was silenced even to herself. She put no more questions to Rodie, she tried to put out of her own mind her personal recollections, and every attempt to understand. Did not Rodie say it was not their business, that it did not matter to them what papa said? Elsie could not put away her curiosity out of her heart, but she bowed her head to Rodie’s action. After all, what a grand discovery it was that Rodie should be the one to see what was right. CHAPTER XI. THE GROWING UP OF THE BAIRNS. This was the last incident in the secret history of the Buchanan family for the moment. The sudden, painful, and unexpected crisis which had arisen on Marion’s wedding day ceased almost as suddenly as it arose. The Mowbrays, after staying a short time in St. Rule’s, departed to more genial climes, and places in which more amusement was to be found--for though even so long ago, St. Rule’s had become a sort of watering-place, where people came in the summer, it was not in the least a place of organised pleasure, or where there was any whirl of gaiety; nothing could be more deeply disapproved of than a whirl of gaiety in these days. There were no hotels and few lodgings of the usual watering-place kind. People who came hired houses and transported themselves and all their families, resuming all their usual habits with the sole difference that the men of the family, instead of going out upon their usual avocations every day, went out to golf instead: which was then a diversion practised only in certain centres of its own, where most of the people could play--a thing entirely changed nowadays, as everybody is aware, when it is to be found everywhere, and practised by everybody, the most of whom do not know how to play.