of Miss Blanchard's little maid. When
they came back, the daughter had married, and become a widow, in the
interval; and the pretty little maid, instead of returning with them to
Thorpe Ambrose, turns up suddenly, all alone, as a pupil at a school
in France. There she was, at a first-rate establishment, with her
maintenance and education secured until she married and settled in life,
on this understanding--that she never returned to England. Those were
all the particulars she could be prevailed on to give the lawyer who
drew up these instructions. She declined to say what had happened
abroad; she declined even, after all the years that had passed, to
mention her mistress's married name. It's quite clear, of course, that
she was in possession of some family secret; and that the Blanchards
paid for her schooling on the Continent to keep her out of the way. And
it's equally plain that she would never have kept her secret as she did
if she had not seen her way to trading on it for her own advantage at
some future time. A clever woman, as I've told you already! A devilish
clever woman, who hasn't been knocked about in the world, and seen the
ups and downs of life abroad and at home, for nothing."

"Yes, yes, Jemmy; quite true. How long did she stop, please, at the
school in France?"

Bashwood the younger referred to the papers. "She stopped at the French
school," he replied, "till she was seventeen. At that time something
happened at the school which I find mildly described in these papers
as 'something unpleasant.' The plain fact was that the music-master
attached to the establishment fell in love with Miss Gwilt. He was a
respectable middle-aged man, with a wife and family; and, finding the
circumstances entirely hopeless, he took a pistol, and, rashly assuming
that he had brains in his head, tried to blow them out. The doctor saved
his life, but not his reason; he ended, where he had better have begun,
in an asylum. Miss Gwilt's beauty having been at the bottom of the
scandal, it was, of course, impossible--though she was proved to have
been otherwise quite blameless in the matter--for her to remain at the
school after what had happened. Her 'friends' (the Blanchards) were
communicated with. And her friends transferred her to another school; at
Brussels, this time--What are you sighing about? What's wrong now?"

"I can't help feeling a little for the poor music-master, Jemmy. Go on."

"According to her own account of