As Celia went to Miriam's room, can it be wondered that her step grew slower and, notwithstanding her own happiness, that her heart waxed heavy with sorrow for the wretched young wife? She found Miriam lying back in her chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face almost vacant of any expression; she seemed weighed down by the apathy resulting from utter hopelessness, from a knowledge of some evil from which she could not escape. She turned her eyes to Celia, and Celia's heart was made to ache by the look of dumb suffering in them, that look which the weak always wear when the world is going wrong with them.
Celia knelt down beside the chair, and took one of the nerveless hands.
"Are you better, getting stronger, Lady Heyton?" she asked, gently.
Miriam shook her head listlessly, and gazed out of the window; then she turned her eyes again slowly to Celia, and said, in a toneless voice,
"Is it true, what the servants are saying, that the Marquess's elder brother has been discovered, and that the Marquess, our Marquess, is no longer the master here? Marie came and told me something about it; but she was confused and rambled, and I could make very little of it."
"It is true," said Celia. "The elder brother is alive, is here in the house. He had been living in seclusion for years; the Marquess discovered a little while ago that his brother was alive; but the real Marquess did not wish to displace his younger brother. He was living in poverty, working for his living. I knew him at that time."
Miriam looked only slightly interested. "You knew him? That's strange."
"Yes; it is all very strange," Celia agreed. "It was Mr. Clendon—we still call him that; it is so difficult to remember that he is the Marquess—and I lived in the same building; we called it 'The Jail'; it was so prison-like." Her voice grew dreamy, as she spoke. "He played the violin in the orchestra of a theatre; I used to hear him practising; the music floated up to my room; how long ago it seems! It was he who persuaded Lord Sutcombe to engage me as librarian, here at the Hall."
"It sounds like a novel," commented Miriam, absently.