"No circumstances could excuse your going off in this way," flashed Lady Lancaster. "There is Lord Lancaster coming home by the first of June, and of course I must invite a party to meet him; and there are the rooms, and--and--everything to be seen to. No one knows my ways and my wishes like you who have been at Lancaster Park so many years. Now, what am I to do?" She lifted her wrinkled hands helplessly. "There will have to be a new housekeeper found, of course," hazarded Mrs. West, timidly. "Oh, yes; an ignorant creature who knows nothing, and who will have everything wrong, of course, just when I want all to be at its best," groaned the wizened old aristocrat. "I call this downright ungrateful in you, West, this going off just as we had got used to each other's ways." Mrs. West suppressed a struggling smile around the corners of her lips, and, rising up, stood respectfully before her hard mistress. "My lady, I'm sorry you think so hard of me. Indeed, I would not leave you but for good cause," she said. "I had hoped and expected to spend all my days at Lancaster Park, but my duty calls me elsewhere. I assure you it is as hard for me as for you. Think how hard it is for me, a poor lone woman, to have to cross the ocean--at my time of life, too! And then to have to take a child to raise and spend all my earnings on--a child that's no kin to me, either, you understand, my lady!" CHAPTER III. Lady Lancaster settled her gold-bowed spectacles on her long Roman nose, and fixed a keen, penetrating stare on the troubled face of her housekeeper. "Whose child is it, and what is it all about, anyhow?" she sputtered, vaguely. "It's my brother-in-law's child, and he's dead away off in New York somewhere, and the child's left to me--his penniless, friendless orphan child, left to me by the dead; and how could I refuse the charge, my lady?" inquired Mrs. West, reproachfully. "I should think the dead would come from his grave, away off yonder in America, to haunt me if I didn't do his bidding," cried she, glancing behind her with something like a shudder of superstitious fear. "I didn't know you were simpleton enough to believe in ghosts, West," sniffed my lady, contemptuously. "And I didn't know you ever had a brother-in-law, either. Where has he been all these years?" "If you will read this letter, Lady Lancaster, you will find out in fewer words than I can tell you," said Mrs. West, respectfully presenting her letter, which all this time she had been holding open in her hand. My lady took the black-edged sheet into the grasp of her thin, bony hand, and ran her keen eyes down the written page.