at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you were so
desperately attached to each other.'

'O yes, I recollect,' said Ethelberta. 'And he had a sister, I think. I
wonder where they went to live after the family collapse.'

'I do not know,' said Lady Petherwin, taking up another sheet of paper.
'I have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to no
profession, became a teacher of music in some country town--music having
always been his hobby. But the facts are not very distinct in my
memory.' And she dipped her pen for another letter.

Ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in-
law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want to
torment their minds in comfort--to her own room. Here she thoughtfully
sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her maid.

'Menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a footstep
that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair and
speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down and
find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this house?
Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly inquiring; you have ways
of getting to know things, have you not? If the devoted George were here
now, he would help--'

'George was nothing to me, ma'am.'

'James, then.'

'And I only had James for a week or ten days: when I found he was a