was dying with curiosity. She had heard, from
the servants, that I had not returned to the house until past ten o'clock
on the previous night; and she was absolutely bewildered by the
discovery. What could her dear Gerard have been doing, out in the dark by
himself, for all that time?

"For some part of the time," I answered, "I was catching moths in
Fordwitch Wood."

"What an extraordinary occupation for a young man! Well? And what did you
do after that?"

"I walked on through the wood, and renewed my old associations with the
river and the mill."

Mrs. Roylake's fascinating smile disappeared when I mentioned the mill.
She suddenly became a cold lady--I might even say a stiff lady.

"I can't congratulate you on the first visit you have paid in our
neighborhood," she said. "Of course that bold girl contrived to attract
your notice?"

I replied that I had met with the "bold girl" purely by accident, on her
side as well as on mine; and then I started a new topic. "Was it a
pleasant dinner-party last night?" I asked--as if the subject really
interested me. I had not been quite four and twenty hours in England yet,
and I was becoming a humbug already.

My stepmother was her charming self again the moment my question had
passed my lips. Society--provided it was not society at the mill--was
always attractive as a topic of conversation. "Your absence was the only
drawback," she answered. "I have asked the two ladies (my lord has an
engagement) to dine here to-day, without ceremony. They are most anxious
to meet you. My dear Gerard! you look surprised. Surely you know who the
ladies are?"

I was obliged to acknowledge my ignorance.

Mrs. Roylake was shocked. "At any rate," she resumed, "you have heard of
their father, Lord Uppercliff?"

I made another shameful confession. Either I had forgotten Lord
Uppercliff, during my long absence abroad, or I had never heard of him.

Mrs. Roylake was disgusted. "And this is a foreign education!" she
exclaimed. "Thank Heaven, you have returned to your own country! We will
drive out after luncheon, and pay a round of visits." When this prospect
was placed before me, I remembered having read in books of sensitive
persons receiving impressions which made their blood run cold; I now
found myself one of those persons, for the first time in my life. "In the
meanwhile," Mrs. Roylake continued, "I must tell you--excuse me for
laughing; it seems so very absurd that you should not know