"At least, Madame Guise, that cannot be any affair of yours."
"You are angry with me, madam; your words are cold, your tones resentful. The first evening that I arrived at Greylands I chanced to hear about that young man. Mollee, the servant at the inn, came up to help me make the tisane for my little child, and she talked. She told of the young man's strange disappearance, saying he was supposed to have been murdered: and that Mr. Castlemaine knew of it. Ah, it had a great effect upon me, that history; I was cold and miserable, and my little one was ill: I could not get it away from my mind."
"I think you might have done so by this time," frigidly remarked Mary Ursula.
"But it comes up now and again," she rejoined, "and that keeps alive the remembrance. Events bring it up. Only to-day, when we had not left the dinner-table, some stranger came pushing his way into the room behind Miles, asking Mr. Castlemaine what he had done with Basil's son, young Anthony. It put Mr. Castlemaine out; I saw his face change; and he sent us all from the room."
Mary Ursula forgot her coldness. It was this very subject that had deprived her past night of sleep: though she could no more confess it to Madame Guise than the latter could confess. The two were playing unconsciously at hide-and-seek with one another.
"Who was the stranger, Madame Guise?"
"Mr. Castlemaine called him Squire Dobie. They were together ever so long. Mr. Castlemaine, I say, did not like it; one might see that. Oh, when I think of what might have happened that night to the young Anthony, it makes me shudder."
"The best thing you can do is not to think of it, Madame Guise. It is nothing to you, one way or the other. And it is scarcely in good taste for you to be suspicious of Mr. Castlemaine while you are eating his bread. Rely upon it, when this matter shall have been cleared up--if it ever be cleared--Mr. Castlemaine will be found as good and honest as you are."
The bell for the Sisters' supper rang clanging out. Madame Guise put her bonnet on, and rose.
"Do forgive me," she whispered with deprecation. "I might not to have mentioned it to you; I did not wish to offend, or to hurt your feelings. But I am very lonely here; I have but my own heart to commune with."