our housekeeper, for instance, stands perfectly petrified at your
extraordinary likeness to him. Mrs. Hilliard says you have given her a
'turn' she never expects to get over."

Mr. Legard smiled, but was very grave again directly.

"It is odd--odd--very odd!"

"Yes," said May Everard, with a sagacious nod; "a great deal, too, to be
a chance resemblance. Hush! here comes Rupert. Well, how have you left
mamma?"

"Better; Louise is with her. And now to finish dinner; I have an
engagement for the evening."

Sir Rupert was strangely silent and _distrait_ all through dinner, a
darkly thoughtful shadow glooming his ever pale face. A supposition had
flashed across his mind that turned him hot and cold by turns--a
supposition that was almost a certainty. This striking resemblance of
the painter, Legard, to his dead father was no freak of nature, but a
retributive Providence revealing the truth of his birth. It came back to
his memory with painfully acute clearness, that his mother had sunk down
once before in a violent tremor and faintness at the mere sound of his
name. Legard had spoken of a veiled lady--Madam Ada, Plymouth, her
address. Could his mother--his--be that mysterious arbiter of Legard's
fate? The name--the place. Sir Rupert Thetford wrenched his thoughts by
a violent effort away, shocked and horrified at himself.

"It cannot be--it cannot?" he said to himself passionately; "I am mad to
harbor such thoughts. It is a desecration of the memory of the dead, a
treason to the living. But I wish Guy Legard had never come here."

There was one other person at Thetford Towers strangely and strongly
effected by Mr. Guy Legard; and that person, oddly enough, was Mrs.
Weymore, the governess. Mrs. Weymore had never even seen the late Sir
Noel that any one knew of, and yet she had recoiled with a shrill,
feminine cry of utter consternation at sight of the young man.

"I don't see why you should get the fidgets about it, Mrs. Weymore,"
Miss Everard remarked, with her great, bright eyes suspiciously keen,
"you never knew Sir Noel."

Mrs. Weymore sunk down on a lounge quite white and startled.

"My dear, I beg your pardon. I--it seems strange. O May!" with a sudden
sharp cry, losing self-control, "who is that young man?"

"Why, Mr. Guy Legard, artist," answered May, composedly, the bright eyes
still on the alert; "formerly in 'boyhood's sunny hours,' you know,
Master Guy--let me see! Yes, Vyking."

"Vyking!" repeated