"What Stevens was doing I cannot say; but Gilbert's object was you. He was sent here by my mother to make himself acquainted with you by sight, and to discover all he could about you and your friends here. As to provisions, he catered for himself in the village and elsewhere; but on two or three occasions, when he dared not venture out, and was very hard bestead, he supplied himself from Mr. Passmore's larder."
"How did he get there?"
"Through your room."
"Edward!"
"It was a bold move, and might have cost him dear if you had awoke."
"Do you mean to say that he did it while Lucy and I were sleeping in the room?"
"Yes," said Edward, with his grave smile.
Celia sent her memory back to the time, and a dim vision gradually revealed itself to her of one winter night when, awaking suddenly, she had fancied she heard mice in the wainscot, and the next morning the black cat had suffered at the hands of Molly for the absence of a partridge and a cold chicken from the buttery.
"But how came my step-mother to know anything about this hidden chamber?"
"Through Stevens, who at one time was among her confessors. Oh! the priests know their old hiding-places, though the owners may have lost the tradition of them."