"But did you not have an interview with her when you came?"
"Yes, a short one. Harry Chandos was sitting with her, and went out, after a few words to me, staying in the next room. It seemed to me that she was impatient to have him back again: any way, she cut the meeting very short. I am bound to say that she appeared collected then."
Mrs. Penn lifted her hand, glittering with rings, to her brow as she spoke, and pushed slightly back her glowing hair. Her face looked troubled—that kind of trouble that arises from perplexity.
"Allowing it to be as you fancy, Mrs. Penn, they would surely have a doctor to her. Any medical man, if requested, would keep the secret."
"Ah! it's not altogether that, I expect," returned Mrs. Penn, with a curious look. "You would keep it, and I would keep it, as inmates of the family; and yet you see how jealously we are excluded. I suspect the true motive is, that they dare not risk the revelations she might make."
"What revelations?"
"You do not, perhaps, know it, Miss Hereford, but there is a sword hanging over the Chandos family," she continued, dropping her voice to a whisper. "An awful sword. It is suspended by a hair; and a chance word of betrayal might cause it to fall. Of that chance word the Chandoses live in dread. Lady Chandos, if she be really insane, might inadvertently speak it."
"Over which of them?" I exclaimed, in dismay.
"I had rather not tell you which. It lies over them all, so to say. It is that, beyond question, which keeps Sir Thomas in India: when the blow comes, he can battle with it better there than at home. They lie under enough disgrace as it is: they will lie under far greater then."
"They appear to be just those quiet, unpretending, honourable people who could not invoke disgrace. They—surely you cannot be alluding to Miss Chandos's runaway marriage!" I broke off, as the thought occurred to me.