By a sense of the fitness of things, the state-rooms at the Hold, generally kept for visitors, were assigned by Miss Diana to her brother. He was shown to them, and was in the act of gazing from the window at the well-remembered features of the old domain when there stole in upon him one, white and tearless, but with a terrified imploring despair in her countenance. "Maude, my child, what is it? I like your face, my dear, and must have you henceforth for my very own child!" "Not me, Uncle Rupert, never mind me," she said, the kindly tones telling upon her breaking heart and bringing forth a gush of tears. "If you will only love Rupert!--only get Mr. Chattaway to forgive him!" "But he may be dead, child." "Uncle Rupert, if he were not dead--if you found him now, to-day," she reiterated--"would _you_ deliver him up to justice? Oh, don't blame him; don't visit it upon him! It was the Trevlyn temper, and Mr. Chattaway should not have provoked it by horsewhipping him." "_I_ blame him! _I_ deliver a Trevlyn up to justice!" echoed Squire Trevlyn, with a threatening touch of the Trevlyn temper at that very moment. "What are you saying, child? If Rupert is in life he shall have his wrongs righted from henceforth. The cost of a burnt rick? The ricks were mine, not Chattaway's. Rupert Trevlyn is my heir, and he shall so be recognised and received." She sank down before him crying softly with the relief his words brought her. Squire Trevlyn placed his hand on her pretty hair, caressingly. "Don't grieve so, child; he may not be dead. I'll find him if he is to be found. The police shall know they have a Squire Trevlyn amongst them again." "Uncle Rupert, he is very near; lying in concealment--ill--almost dying. We have not dared to betray it, and the secret is nearly killing us." He listened in amazement, and questioned her until he gathered the outlines of the case. "Who has known of this, do you say?" "My aunt Edith, and I, and the doctor; and--and--George Ryle." The consciousness with which the last name was brought out, the sudden blush, whispered a tale to keen Squire Trevlyn. "Halloa, Miss Maude! I read a secret. _That_ will not do, you know. I cannot spare you from the Hold for all the George Ryles in the world. You must be its mistress." "My aunt Diana will be that," murmured Maude. "That she never shall be whilst I am master," was the emphatic rejoinder. "If Diana could look quietly on and see her father deceived, help to deceive him; see Chattaway usurp the Hold to the exclusion of Joe's son, and join in the wickedness, she has forfeited all claim to it: she shall neither reign nor reside in it. No, my little Maude, you must live with me, as mistress of Trevlyn Hold." Maude's tears were flowing in silence. She kept her head down. "What is George Ryle to you?" somewhat sternly asked Squire Trevlyn. "Do you love him?" "I had no one else to love: they were not kind to me--except my aunt Edith," she murmured.