"Do you still sleep in the north wing?" asked Maria, the thought occurring to her. "Oh no. I changed my room after that." Ella had told all she had to tell. But the theme was full of interest, and the vicar and Maria plied her with questions all through luncheon, to which meal they made her stay. She left when it was over; her uncle might want her; and Maria put on her bonnet to walk with her a portion of the way. Their road took them past the "Leaning Gate." Mrs. Keen was having the sign repainted--a swinging gate that hung aloft beside the inn. A girl, the one young servant kept, stood with her arms a-kimbo, looking up at the process. The landlady was a short, active, bustling woman, with a kind, motherly face and pleasant dark eyes.
"How do you do, Mrs. Keen?" called out Maria, as they were passing.
Mrs. Keen came running up, and took the offered hand into both of hers. "I heard you were back, Miss Maria, and glad enough we shall be of it. But--but----"
She could not go on. The remembrance of what had happened overcame her, and she burst into tears.
"Yes, young ladies, I know your kind sympathy, and I hope you'll forgive me," she said, after listening to the few words of consolation they both strove to speak--though, indeed, what consolation could there be for such a case as hers?
"We had been gone away so short a time when it happened!" lamented Maria.
"You left on the first of February, Miss Maria, and this was on the night of the fifteenth," said Mrs. Keen, wiping her eyes with her ample white apron. "Ah, it has been a dreadful thing! It is the uncertainty, the suspense, you see, ladies, that is so bad to bear. Sometimes I think I should be happy if I could only know she was dead and at rest."
"Susan's getting almost silly with it," spoke the landlady, lowering her voice, as she glanced over her shoulder at the house. "She has all sorts of wild fancies in her head, poor girl; thinking--thinking----"
Mrs. Keen glanced at Miss Winter, and broke off. The words she had been about to say were these: "Thinking that Katherine, dead or alive, is still at Heron Dyke."
Miss Winter sat in her low chair by the window of her sitting-room in the north wing; for though she had abandoned her bedroom in that quarter, she still, on occasion, sat in that. A closed book lay on her lap, her chin was resting on the palm of one hand, and her eyes, to all appearance, were taking in for the thousandth time the features of the well-known scene before her. But in reality she saw nothing of it: her thoughts were elsewhere. This was Tuesday, the day fixed for Edward Conroy to dine at the Hall. How came it that his image--the image of a man whom she had seen but twice in her life--dwelt so persistently in her thoughts? She was vexed and annoyed with herself to find how often her mind went wandering off in a direction where--or so she thought--it had no right to go. She tried her hardest to keep it under control, to fill it with the occupations that had hitherto sufficed for its quiet contentment, but at the first unguarded moment it was away again, to bask in sunshine, as it were, till caught in the very act, and haled ignominiously back.