"How you do go on, miss, to be sure!" declared Mrs. Mellow beamingly, as she bustled about spreading the cloth for tea. "As if you didn't know you were always as welcome as the flowers in May, spring cleaning or no spring cleaning! And I suppose, miss"--archly--"it'll be 'Mrs.' the next time you visit us--if all I hear is true?" Ann laughed. Throwing her arms round the old woman's neck, she kissed her warmly. "Yes, it really will, Mellow. I believe"--teasingly--"you're just aching to hear all about it?" "Well, miss," admitted Mellow, holding the kettle, suspended a moment above the teapot, "I don't want to seem inquisitive or disrespectful, you may be sure, but I _would_ like to hear a bit about the gentleman who's going to marry my young lady. I always think of you as my young lady, you know, Miss Ann. You were more like a daughter than anything else to Master Tony's mother, God rest her! Perhaps you have his photograph, miss, that you could show me?" Ann nodded smilingly--she knew her Mellow, and had anticipated this request!--and forthwith proceeded to descant on Eliot's various virtues and the beauty of Heronsmere until Mrs. Mellow declared that she could, as she phrased it, "picture it all as plain as if she'd seen it herself." Then, when the good woman's kindly interest was satisfied, Ann embarked on the quest which had been uppermost in her mind when she sought the housekeeper's room. "Mellow, I'm worried about Tony," she announced at last. The smile died out of Mrs. Mellow's face like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle. "You've noticed it, then, miss?" she parried uneasily. "Of course I've noticed it. He isn't in the least like himself, and he's almost always out." "Yes, miss." Mrs. Mellow shook her head. "I call it rare bad manners to ask a young lady to the house and then to leave her to entertain herself, as you may say. And I've told Master Tony so more than once." "You told him so? What did he say?" "Why, miss, he looked at me in a funny sort of way, and he said: 'Don't you worry yourself, Mellow. Miss Ann will understand all about it one day--and before very long, too.' I couldn't think what he meant, miss. But I didn't like the way he looked." Ann's brows were knitted. "How did he look?" she asked. "Why, miss, sort of reckless. Like he did that time when we were down at Lorne last year and he and Sir Philip quarrelled something dreadful. He came down to me then, Master Tony did, in the housekeeper's room, at Lorne, and he said: 'Well, I'm off, Mellow, and whether you ever see me again or not depends on whether you can beat any sense into the head of that obstinate old man upstairs.' He was mad with anger, was Master Tony, or of course he wouldn't have spoken like that of his uncle. And I'm blest if he didn't go out of the house the very next day! Sir Philip was in a rare taking, I remember." "He needn't have been," said Ann, smiling. "Tony only came to Oldstone Cottage and stayed with Robin and me."