“Tynn says she remembers, when that Brother Jarrum was here in the spring, that Nancy made frequent excuses for going to Deerham in the evening,” resumed Sibylla.

“She thinks it must have been to frequent those meetings in Peckaby’s shop.”

“I thought the man, Jarrum, had gone off, leaving the mischief to die away,” observed Lionel.

“So did everybody else,” said Jan.  “He came back the day that you were married.  Nancy’s betters got lured into Peckaby’s, as well as Nancy,” he added.  “That sickly daughter at Chalk Cottage, she’s gone.”

Lionel looked very much astonished.

“No!” he uttered.

“Fact!” said Jan.  “The mother came to me the morning after the flitting, and said she had been seduced away.  She wanted to telegraph to Dr. West—­”

Jan stopped dead, remembering that Sibylla was present, as well as Lionel.  He leaped off the sofa.

“Ah, we shall see them all back some day, if they can only contrive to elude the vigilance of the Mormons.  I’m off, Lionel; old Poynton will think I am not coming to-day.  Good-bye, Sibylla.”

Jan hastened from the room.  Lionel stood at the window, and watched him away.  Sibylla glided up to her husband, nestling against him.

“Lionel, tell me.  Jan never would, though I nearly teased his life out; and Deborah and Amilly persisted that they knew nothing. You tell me.”

“Tell you what, my dearest?”

“After I came home in the winter, there were strange whispers about papa and that Chalk Cottage.  People were mysterious over it, and I never could get a word of explanation.  Jan was the worst; he was coolly tantalising, and it used to put me in a passion.  What was the tale told?”

An involuntary darkening of Lionel’s brow.  He cleared it instantly, and looked down on his wife with a smile.

“I know of no tale worth telling you, Sibylla.”

“But there was a tale told?”

“Jan—­who, being in closer proximity to Dr. West than any one, may be supposed to know best of his private affairs—­tells a tale of Dr. West’s having set a chimney on fire at Chalk Cottage, thereby arousing the ire of its inmates.”

“Don’t you repeat such nonsense to me, Lionel; you are not Jan,” she returned, in a half peevish tone.  “I fear papa may have borrowed money from the ladies, and did not repay them,” she added, her voice sinking to a whisper.  “But I would not say it to any one but you.  What do you think?”

“If my wife will allow me to tell her what I think, I should say that it is her duty—­and mine now—­not to seek to penetrate into any affairs belonging to Dr. West which he may wish to keep to himself.  Is it not so, Sibylla mine?”

Sibylla smiled, and held up her face to be kissed.  “Yes, you are right, Lionel.”

Swayed by impulse, more than by anything else, she thought of her treasures upstairs, in the process of dis-interment from their cases by Benoite, and ran from him to inspect them.  Lionel put on his hat, and strolled out of doors.