‘I suppose so.  Ha-ha!  So come, so go.’

The speakers passed on, their backs becoming visible through the opening.  They appeared to be woodmen.

‘What Lady Mountclere do they mean?’ said Ethelberta.

The woman blushed.  ‘They meant Miss Gruchette.’

‘Oh—­a nickname.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

The woman whispered why in a story of about two minutes’ length.  Ethelberta turned pale.

‘Is she going to return?’ she inquired, in a thin hard voice.

‘Yes; next week.  You know her, m’m?’

‘No.  I am a stranger.’

’So much the better.  I may tell you, then, that an old tale is flying about the neighbourhood—­that Lord Mountclere was privately married to another woman, at Knollsea, this morning early.  Can it be true?’

‘I believe it to be true.’

‘And that she is of no family?’

‘Of no family.’

’Indeed.  Then the Lord only knows what will become of the poor thing.  There will be murder between ’em.’

‘Between whom?’

‘Her and the lady who lives here.  She won’t budge an inch—­not she!’

Ethelberta moved aside.  A shade seemed to overspread the world, the sky, the trees, and the objects in the foreground.  She kept her face away from the woman, and, whispering a reply to her Good-morning, passed through the hollies into the leaf-strewn path.  As soon as she came to a large trunk she placed her hands against it and rested her face upon them.  She drew herself lower down, lower, lower, till she crouched upon the leaves.  ‘Ay—­’tis what father and Sol meant!  O Heaven!’ she whispered.

She soon arose, and went on her way to the house.  Her fair features were firmly set, and she scarcely heeded the path in the concentration which had followed her paroxysm.  When she reached the park proper she became aware of an excitement that was in progress there.

Ethelberta’s absence had become unaccountable to Lord Mountclere, who could hardly permit her retirement from his sight for a minute.  But at first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour’s desertion, unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives.  Then he had inquired, searched, been alarmed:  he had finally sent men-servants in all directions about the park to look for her.  He feared she had fallen out of a window, down a well, or into the lake.  The next stage of search was to have been drags and grapnels:  but Ethelberta entered the house.

Lord Mountclere rushed forward to meet her, and such was her contrivance that he noticed no change.  The searchers were called in, Ethelberta explaining that she had merely obeyed the wish of her brother in going out to meet him.  Picotee, who had returned from her walk with Sol, was upstairs in one of the rooms which had been allotted to her.  Ethelberta managed to run in there on her way upstairs to her own chamber.