"What do you call him?" asked Lucille, with the persistence of a child
on a trifle.

"Dick."

"And yet you do not like him?"

"I have never thought whether I like him or not--one does not think of
such questions with people who are like one's own family."

"But surely," said Lucille, "one cannot like a person who is not
good?"

"Of course not," answered the other, with her shadowy smile. "At least
it is always so written in books."

[Illustration: "YOU SAY 'AH!' AND IT MEANS NOTHING. I LOOK AT YOUR
FACE AND IT SAYS NOTHING."]

After this qualified statement Isabella sat with her firm white hands
clasped together in idleness on her lap. She was not a woman to fill
in the hours with the trifling occupation of the work-basket, and yet
was never aught but womanly in dress, manner, and, as I take it,
thought. Lucille's fingers, on the contrary, were never still, and
before she had lived at Hopton a fortnight she had half a dozen small
protegees in the village for whom she fashioned little garments.

It was she who broke the short silence--her companion seemed to be
waiting for that or for something else.

"Do you think," she asked, "that mother trusts Mr. Howard too much?
She places implicit faith in all he says or does--just as my father
did when he was alive."

Isabella--than whom none was more keenly alive to my many
failings--paused before she answered, in her measured way:

"It all depends upon his motive in undertaking the management of your
affairs."

"Oh--he is paid," said Lucille, rather hurriedly. "He is paid, of
course."

"This house is his; the land, so far as you can see from any of the
windows, is his also. He has affairs of his own to manage, which he
neglects. A mere salary seems an insufficient motive for so deep an
interest as he displays."

Lucille did not answer for some moments. Indeed, her needlework seemed
at this moment to require careful attention.

"What other motive can he have?" she asked at length, indifferently.

"I do not understand the story of the large fortune that slipped so
unaccountably through his fingers," murmured Isabella, and her
hearer's face cleared suddenly.

"Alphonse Giraud's fortune?"

"Yes," said Isabella, looking at her companion with steady eyes,
"Monsieur Giraud's fortune."

"It was stolen, as you know--for I have told you about it--by my
father's secretary, Charles Miste."

"Yes; and Dick Howard says that he will recover it," laughed Isabella.