No great measure of persuasion was needed on the part of Sir Gilbert Clare in order to induce Lady Pell to extend the term of her visit at Withington Chase.

Sooth to lay, age was beginning to tell somewhat upon her ladyship. With advancing years her craving to be continually on the move from place to place began to work less powerfully within her. There were even times when a growing sense of loneliness made itself sadly felt, and when the knowledge that she was both childless and homeless would unseal in her heart a fountain of poignant regrets which would well to her eyes in tears, all the more salt, it may be, in that they were, as a rule, so sternly repressed.

Somehow the Chase seemed more of a home to her than any place she had visited for years. There was a sweet nameless charm about the old mansion which affected her--she could hardly have told how. Even when she had been a month there she felt no desire to pack up her trunks and betake herself elsewhere. This, for her, was an altogether novel experience.

It may be that Lady Pell\'s liking for the Chase was due in part, if not wholly, to her recollection of a certain happy season she had spent there when in her teens. It had been the scene of the first and, possibly, the only romance her life had known--a poor little futile romance, as events had proved--but perhaps none the less cherished on that account; and it was still the home of the man who had been the ideal of her girlish dreams.

Sir Gilbert, for his part, was well satisfied that his cousin should make the Chase her home for as long as it might suit her convenience to do so. That he would feel her departure as a loss whenever it should take place, he began to realise more clearly the longer she stayed. She was capital company; never otherwise than lively and in good spirits, not a bit in awe of him, and imbued with a sufficiency of the combative element to make her always ready to administer that pinch of contradiction which men like the Baronet need to put them on their mettle.

Without any design or set intention on her part, Ethel had become a great favourite with the old man. As we know, the Baronet had had several sons, but no daughter, and all unwittingly Ethel had slipped into a vacant niche in his heart, of the existence of which he had heretofore been only dimly aware. In Ethel\'s singing and playing he found something that pleased him exceedingly. And when in some neglected corner she found a heap of old music which had belonged to, and bore the signature of, the first Lady Clare; and when, one evening, without saying anything to him, she ventured to play some of them; and, when he recognised them--voices from the tomb, as it were, silent for thirty long years--his delight was touching to behold. After that Ethel played and sang to him every evening, when he would sit with closed eyes, an elbow resting on either arm of his big easy-chair, and the fingertips of one hand pressed against those of the other, while an expression of great peace and contentment would gradually steal over his grand old features.

"I can\'t tell what it is, Louisa, that draws me so to that girl," he remarked one day to Lady Pell. "It\'s not her good looks, though they are undeniable; and it\'s not her musical abilities, admirable as they are; it\'s a charm, a something altogether indefinable and elusive, to which, if I were to try for an hour, I don\'t think I could give its proper name. Both her eyes and her voice seem to haunt me; it is as if I had seen the one and heard the other in some prior state of existence. At times they affect me in the strangest possible way."

"I don\'t wonder at your being taken by Ethel Thursby," returned Lady Pell. "She is a dear girl, and I should like to have kept her with me always; but her aunts would only lend her to me for a time. In one sense I shall be quite sorry when Beilby, my ordinary companion, is well enough to resume her duties."

"You must not let her go yet awhile, Louisa. And yet, the longer she stays, the harder it will seem to part from her when the time comes."

"There is some one besides you and me, unless I am very much mistaken, who will find it harder still to part from her when the time comes."

"And who may that be, pray?"

"That very nice secretary of yours, Mr. Everard Lisle."

"Lisle! You don\'t mean to say----"

"I mean to say that he\'s over head and ears in love with Ethel Thursby."

"You astonish me. I have remarked nothing."

"Of course not. It was not to be expected. You are only a poor purblind man. Now, I have been sure of it for some time; indeed, I began to have my suspicions almost from the first time they met. I confess that I watch the progress of the little comedy, out of a corner of my eye, with a good deal of interest. I like to see a man in earnest, and that\'s what young Lisle evidently is."

"He\'s a fine fellow, and I wish--it seems a hard thing to say--that my grandson were more like him."

"Well, well, Gilbert, you must just accept Lewis as he is, and make the best of him. I am afraid it would not be well for us if we could have people manufactured to our own liking. But, when all is said, I am not without hope that your grandson will ultimately prove to be everything that you could desire."

They were still talking when a black-bordered letter, which had just arrived, was brought to Sir Gilbert.

"It is from my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Clare," he said as he examined the postmarks before opening it. "From the mourning envelope, I judge that her venerable relative is dead."

And such, indeed, proved to be the case. Giovanna wrote to say that her grandmother was no more, and that in the course of a few days she hoped to be on her way back to England. She had written twice to Sir Gilbert previously, just a few formal lines couched in studiously respectful terms, her first note containing the announcement of her arrival at Catanzaro, and her second conveying the news that her grandmother still lingered, but that all hope of her recovery had been given up. Brief and simple though the notes were, the composition of them had been anything but a labour of love to Giovanna. She had expended both time and pains over them, and, after all, had been far from satisfied with the result.

Sir Gilbert, however, had Giovanna but known it, was quite satisfied. To him his daughter-in-law\'s brief formal communications seemed everything that the occasion demanded. He often thought about her, but never unkindly, and he looked forward to her proximate return with a certain amount of pleasure. He had begun to regard her as an agreeable element in the subdued............