At first her peculiarities defied definition. People said she was very nice, but a little queer, cracked, crazy. She was very impulsive, and sometimes incoherent. No action of hers seemed the result of forethought or preparation. She ordered the servants to bring this, that, or the other thing, and when they came with it she told them they might take it away again, as she had changed her mind. She ordered the brougham for four, went out walking at a quarter to four, and stayed out till six, without countermanding the brougham. About the time that Mr. Grey bought the Manor House, Mrs. Grey had a difference with her cook, and her cook left her in a violent temper. The cook had been with her ever since Mrs. Grey had first come to Daneford, and was the confidential servant of her mistress. Soon after the cook had left it reached the ears of a few acquaintances of Mr. Grey that a dreadful spectre had appeared in his household. The fact that Mrs. Grey had now been married some years and was still childless had preyed very deeply on her excitable temperament, and, dreadful to say, she not unfrequently took more wine than was good for her. Those who heard this now saw a reason, unguessed by others, why the banker bought that odious house swathed round with that fearful wood. There his wife would be secluded, free from prying eyes and guarded against any close daily contact with neighbours. How had it been kept secret so long? The cook, now discharged, had obtained for the unhappy woman what she wanted, and the poor lady was wonderfully discreet and cautious, and until that servant went no one but the cook and the afflicted husband ever dreamed of such a thing. It was dreadful. But the most intimate friend of Grey never knew from him, by even the faintest hint, there was a single cloud over his domestic happiness. He always spoke of his wife in terms of the most tender consideration and kindliness. He was by no means weak or uxorious; but there was a loyal trust, an ever-active sympathy in him towards her, that won greatly on the young and old men and women of Daneford. The evil circumstance under which Mrs. Grey laboured was never an open scandal in the town. In the first place, owing to her own great prudence and circumspection, no one had any suspicion of the melancholy fact from herself. If she was the victim of a debasing weakness, she never betrayed herself publicly, and those who heard of it through indirect ways had kept the secret closely, out of respect to the man whose fame and name and popularity stood so high among his fellow-citizens. Indeed, some who heard the rumour disbelieved it wholly, and declared their conviction that it was the malicious invention of a discharged servant, based on the eccentric habits and unfamiliar ways of the poor lady.