Mrs. Markham felt a triumphant thrill.  She would now hear the solution of the mystery that had been exercising her imaginative powers for some weeks.  She poured forth question after question.  Yet, at the end of half-an-hour, not only had she failed to extort Dutton’s name, but had even entangled herself in a promise of inviolable silence as to the only admitted fact.

She had insisted, threatened, got angry; Bluebell sorrowfully offered to go, but remained firm.

“Well, keep your secret, then,” cried Mrs. Markham, at last, abandoning the contest; “but I shall find it out if I can.  And I must take care that Walter doesn’t,” thought she, with a mischievous chuckle, for that gentleman, many years older than his wife, was a servile worshipper of Mrs. Grundy, and his hair would have stood on end had he known that he was harbouring a young lady with such suspicious antecedents.  Besides her personal liking for Bluebell, Mrs. Markham recollected that if dismissed at this juncture she could scarcely recommend her to any other situation, and then what would become of the poor thing?  But what puzzled her most was the total disappearance of the husband to whom she had been so very lately married.

A clue to this, however, she believed herself to have obtained on observing that Bluebell never failed to study the daily papers with an avidity unusual at her age.

“He must be in the army and gone to the Crimea,” thought she.  “Poor thing! how dreadful!  Some day she will see him in the list of killed and wounded.”

Some little time after, Bluebell, who had in a great measure recovered her strength, came to her room, and said, with frank, open eyes,—­“May I go to Barton and post a letter to my husband?”

A very warm assent drew forth the heartfelt exclamation,—­“How I wish I could tell you all, my dear Mrs. Markham.”

Without that information, it was not so easy to answer Mrs. Leighton’s letter, which she did eventually in very guarded terms, stating that she had proof of the marriage having taken place, but could say no more, except that, “being much pleased with Miss Leigh, she intended to keep her, especially as the children were very much under her own eye, and seldom alone with their governess.”

Mr. Markham was generally the first down, and was rather addicted to a curious inspection of the post-mark on the family correspondence, neatly placed by each recipient’s plate.

His wife one morning found him standing over a large ship letter directed to the governess, with somewhat the expression of distrustful pugnacity with which a dog walks round a hedgehog.

“Is that for Miss Leigh?” said she, carelessly.

“Yes,” with much solemnity.  “Apparently she has a correspondent in the Navy.  It is not a sort of thing I like, and I must say I have often thought Miss Leigh too young and flighty for me.”

“Oh, I believe she is engaged, poor girl!” said Mrs. Markham, slipping out a white one.  “And she gets the children on beautifully.  You thought Emma already so improved in playing.”