"I don't see why you should get the fidgets about it, Mrs. Weymore," Miss Everard remarked, with her great, bright eyes suspiciously keen, "you never knew Sir Noel."
Mrs. Weymore sunk down on a lounge quite white and startled.
"My dear, I beg your pardon. I—it seems strange. O May!" with a sudden sharp cry, losing self-control, "who is that young man?"
"Why, Mr. Guy Legard, artist," answered May, composedly, the bright eyes still on the alert; "formerly in 'boyhood's sunny hours,' you know, Master Guy—let me see! Yes, Vyking."
"Vyking!" repeated Mrs. Weymore with a spasmodic cry; and then dropped her white face in her hands, trembling from head to foot.
"Well, upon my word," Miss Everard said, addressing empty space, "this does cap the globe! The Mysteries of Udolpho were plain reading compared to Mr. Guy Vyking, and the effect he produces on people. He's a very handsome young man, and a very agreeable young man; but I should never have suspected he possessed the power of throwing all the elderly ladies he meets into gasping fits. There's Lady Thetford, he was too much for her, and she had to be helped out of the dining-room; and here's Mrs. Weymore going into hysterics because he used to be called Guy Vyking. I thought my lady might be the veiled lady of his story; but now I think it must have been Mrs. Weymore."
Mrs. Weymore looked up, her very lips white as ashes.
"The veiled lady? What lady? May, tell me all you know of Mr. Vyking."
"Not Vyking now—Legard," answered May; and thereupon the young lady detailed the scanty résumé the artist had given them of his history.
"And I'm very sure it isn't chance at all," concluded May Everard, transfixing the governess with an unwinking stare; "and Mr. Legard is as much a Thetford as Sir Rupert himself. I don't pretend to divination, of course, and I don't clearly see how it is; but it is, Mrs. Weymore; and you could enlighten the young man, and so could my lady, if either of you chose."