“That is the worst of all,” said Miss Musgrave sadly. She had never spoken to any one of her father’s inexorable verdict against John and all belonging to him. “The heir! and I must not take him into the house of his fathers! Take care of them, take care of them while I go---- And, Martha, say nothing--not a word.” “Not if they were to cut me in pieces, ma’am!” said Miss Brown fervently. She was too old a servant to work in the dark; but confidence restored all her faculties to her. It was not, however, in the nature of things that she should discharge her commission without a betrayal more or less of the emergency. “I want some milk, please,” she said to the cook, “for my lady.” It was only in moments of importance that she so spoke of her mistress. And the very sound of her step told a tale. “I told ye there was somethink oop,” said Tom Gardener, still lingering in the kitchen. And to see how the house brightened up, and all the servants grew alert in the flutter of this novelty! Nothing had happened at the castle for so long--they had a right to a sensation. Cook, who had been there for a long time, recounted her experience to her assistants in low tones of mystery. “Ah, if ye’d known the place when the gentlemen was at home,” said cook; “the things as happened in t’auld house--such goings on!--coming in late and early--o’er the watter and o’er the land--and the strivings, that was enough to make a body flee out of their skin!” She ended with a regretful sigh for the old times. “That was life, that was!” she said. Meanwhile Mary Musgrave came in out of the dark hall into the lighted warmth of the dining-room, where the glass and the silver shone red in the firelight. How cosy and pleasant it was there! how warm and cheerful! Just the place to comfort the children and make them forget their miseries. The children! How easily her mind had undertaken the charge of them--the fact of their existence; already they had become the chief feature in her life. She paused to look at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, to smooth her hair, and put the ribbon straight at her neck. The Squire was “very particular,” and yet she did not remember to have had this anxious desire to be pleasant to his eyes since that day when she had crept to him to implore a reversal of his sentence. She had obtained nothing from him then; would she be more fortunate now? The colour had gone out of her face, but her eyes were brighter and more resolute than usual. How her heart beat when Mr. Musgrave said, “Come in,” calmly from the midst of his studies, as she knocked trembling at the library door! PART II. CHAPTER IV. AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS.