By break of day a week thence I waited by the highway for the coach and pair which should carry me with Mr. Bradbury up to London.  My mind was yet confused for the swiftness of events.  My mother, after her first outburst on the evening of Mr. Bradbury’s second visit, had become secretive; she whose life had seemed to me so open and simple, had grown inscrutable; she would satisfy me fully on none of the matters of most concern to me.  This much I gathered—that I was John Craike, son of Richard Craike, who had passed by the name of Howe; that my grandfather was possessed of considerable means, and that for greed of this Charles Craike, my uncle, had plotted against his brother, bringing about his disappearance from England, if not his death.  I believed that my mother at the time of her marriage had held some menial position in the service of Mrs. Charles Craike; that the match had excited bitter opposition from the Craike family, and that my father and she had been wedded secretly, and had lived under her p. 46name in London, fearing Charles Craike and his hostility.  And that she had found from the first the hand of Charles Craike in the disappearance of her husband, and had fled away to live at Chelton through her concern for me and the enmity of Charles.