Mr. Pennithorne went home thoughtful, and Miss Musgrave remained behind, if not exactly turned in a new direction, yet confused and excited in her mental being by the introduction of a new element. Randolph Musgrave, though her brother, was less known to Mary than he was to the tutor who had travelled and lived with him in the interval during which he had made his nearest approach to friendship with his own family. He had been brought up by an uncle on the mother’s side who did not love the Musgraves, and had succeeded to the family living belonging to that race, and lived now, as he had been brought up, in an atmosphere quite different from that which belonged to his nominal home in the north. Except now and then, in a holiday visit, Randolph had scarcely spent any portion of his life at Penninghame, except the short period just before, and for a little time after, his university career, when he shared with his brother John the special instructions of Mr. Pennithorne. The two young men had worked together then, or made believe to work, and they had travelled together; but being of very different dispositions, and brought up in ways curiously unlike, they had not been made into cordial friends by this period of semi-artificial union. Randolph had been trained to entertain but a small opinion of everything at Penninghame, and when Penninghame became public property, and John and all his affairs and peculiarities were discussed in the newspapers, the younger son did something very like the Scriptural injunction--shaking the dust from off his feet as he departed. He went away after some painful scenes with his father. It was not the old Squire’s fault that his eldest son had become in the eyes of the world a criminal; but Randolph was as bitter at the ignominy brought upon his name as if it had been a family contrivance to annoy and distress him, and had gone away vowing that never again would he have anything to do with his paternal home. There had been a long gap in their relations after that, but at his marriage there had been a kind of reconciliation, enough to give a decorous aspect to his relations with his “people.” He had brought his bride to his father’s house, and since then he had written, as Mary said, now and then, once or twice in the year, to inquire after his father’s health. This was not much, but it saved appearances, and prevented the open scandal of a family quarrel. But Mary, who replied punctiliously to these questions, did not see the need of making a further intimation to him of anything that affected the family. What had he to do with John’s children? She would no more have thought of informing him of any private event in her own history, or of looking to him for sympathy, than she would have stopped a beggar on the road to communicate her good or evil fortune. But the very name of Randolph suggested new complications. She was glad to escape from the whole matter and listen to the account of