CHAPTER X.

THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON.

When Mr. and Mrs. Greswold left the church, the stranger was taking his place in the Hillersdon wagonette, a capacious vehicle, drawn by a pair of upstanding black-brown horses, set off by servants in smart liveries of dark brown and gold.

Mildred gave a sigh of relief. If the stranger was a visitor at Riverdale it was not likely that he would stay long in the neighbourhood, or be seen again for years to come. The guests at Riverdale were generally birds of passage; and the same faces seldom appeared there twice. Mr. and Mrs. Hillersdon of Riverdale were famous for their extensive circle, and famous for bringing new people into the county. Some of their neighbours said it was Mr. Hillersdon who brought the people there, and that Mrs. Hillersdon had nothing to do with the visiting list; others declared that husband and wife were equally fickle and equally frivolous.

Riverdale was one of the finest houses within ten miles of Romsey, and it was variously described by the local gentry. It was called a delightful house, or it was called a curious house, according to the temper of the speaker. Its worst enemy could not deny that it was a splendid house—spacious, architectural, luxurious, with all the appendages of wealth and dignity—nor could its worst enemy deny its merit as one of the most hospitable houses in the county.

Notwithstanding this splendour and lavish hospitality, the local magnates did not go to Riverdale, and the Hillersdons were not received in some of the best houses. Tom Hillersdon was a large landowner, a millionaire, and a man of good family; but Tom Hillersdon was considered to have stranded himself in middle life by a marriage which in the outer world was spoken of vaguely as “unfortunate,” but which the straitlaced among his neighbours considered fatal. No man who had so married could hold up his head among his friends any more; no man who had so married could hope to have his wife received in decent people’s houses. In spite of which opinion prevailing among Tom Hillersdon’s oldest friends Mrs. Hillersdon contrived to gather a good many people round her, and some of them the most distinguished in the land. She had Cabinet Ministers, men of letters, and famous painters among her guests. She had plenty of women friends—of a sort: attractive women, intellectual and enlightened women; sober matrons, bread-and-butter girls; women who doated on Mrs. Hillersdon, and, strange to say, had never heard her history.

And yet Hillersdon’s wife had a history scarcely less famous than that of Cleopatra or Nell Gwynne. Louise Hillersdon was once Louise Lorraine, the young adventuress whose Irish gray eyes had set all London talking when the Great Exhibition of ’62 was still a monstrous iron skeleton, and when South Kensington was in its infancy. Louise Lorraine’s extravagance, and Louise Lorraine’s devotees, from German princes and English dukes downwards, had been town-talk. Her box at the opera had been the cynosure of every eye; and Paris ran mad when she drove in the Bois, or exhibited her diamonds in the Rue Lepelletier; or supped in the small hours at the Café de Paris, with the topmost strawberries in the basket. Numerous and conflicting were the versions of her early history—the more sensational chronicles describing her as the Aphrodite of the gutter. Some people declared that she could neither read nor write, and could not stir without her amanuensis at her elbow; others affirmed that she spoke four languages, and read a Greek play or a chapter of Thucidydes every night, with her feet on the fender, while her maid brushed her hair. The sober truth lay midway between these extremes. She was the daughter of a doctor in a line regiment; she was eminently beautiful, very ignorant, and very clever. She wrote an uneducated hand, never read anything better than a sentimental novel, sang prettily, and could accompany her songs on the guitar with a good deal of dash and fire. To this may be added that she was an adept in the art of dress, had as much tact and finesse as a leader of the old French noblesse, and more audacity than a Parisian cocotte in the golden age of Cocotterie. Such she was when Tom Hillersdon, Wiltshire squire, and millionaire, swooped like an eagle upon this fair dove, and bore her off to his eerie. There was howling and gnashing of teeth among those many admirers who were all thinking seriously about making the lovely Louise a _bonâ fide_ offer; and it was felt in a certain set that Tom Hillersdon had done a valiant and victorious deed; but his country friends were of one accord in the idea that Hillersdon had wrecked himself for ever.

The Squire’s wife came to Riverdale, and established herself there with as easy an air as if she had been a duchess. She gave herself no trouble about the county families. London was near enough for the fair Louise, and she filled her house—or Tom Hillersdon filled it—with relays of visitors from the great city. Scarcely had she been settled there a week when the local gentry were startled at seeing her sail into church with one of the most famous English statesmen in her train. Upon the Sunday after she was attended by a great painter and a well-known savant; and besides these she had a pew full of smaller fry—a lady novelist, a fashionable actor, a celebrated Queen’s Counsel, and a county member.

“Where does she get those men?” asked Lady Marjorie Danefeld, the Conservative member’s wife; “surely they can’t _all_ be—reminiscences.”

It had been supposed while the newly-wedded couple were on their honeymoon that the lady’s arrival at Riverdale would inaugurate a reign of profanity—that Sunday would be given over to Bohemian society, café-chantant songs, champagne, and cigarette-smoking. Great was the surprise of the locality, therefore, when Mrs. Hillersdon appeared in the Squire’s pew on Sunday morning, neatly dressed, demure, nay, with an aspect of more than usual sanctity; greater still the astonishment when she reappeared in the afternoon, and listened meekly to the catechising of the school-children and to the baptism of a refractory baby; greater even yet when it was found that these pious practices were continued, that she never missed a Saint’s-Day service, that she had morning prayers for family and household, and that she held meetings of an evangelical character in her drawing-room—meetings at which curates from outlying parishes gathered like a flock of crows, and at which the excellence of the tea and coffee, pound-cake and muffins, speedily became known to the outside world.

Happily for Tom Hillersdon these pious tendencies did not interfere with his amusements or the pleasantness of his domestic life. Riverdale was enlivened by a perennial supply of lively or interesting people. Notoriety of some kind was a passport to the Hillersdons’ favour. It was an indication that a man was beginning to make his mark when he was asked to Riverdale. When he had made his mark he might think twice about going. Riverdale was the paradise of budding celebrities.

So to-day, seeing the stranger get into the Hillersdon wagonette, Mrs. Greswold opined that he was a man who had made some kind of reputation. He could not be an actor with that beard. He was a painter, perhaps. She thought he looked like a painter.

The wagonette was full of well-dressed women and well-bred men, all with an essentially metropolitan—or cosmopolitan—air. The eighteen-carat stamp of “county” was obviously deficient. Mrs. Hillersdon had her own carriage—a barouche—which she shared with an elderly lady, who looked as correct as if she had been a bishop’s wife. She was on bowing terms with Mrs. Greswold. They had met at hunt-balls and charity bazaars, and at various other functions from which the wife of a local landowner can hardly be excluded—even when she has a history.

Mildred thought no more of the auburn-haired stranger after the wagonette had disappeared in a cloud of summer-dust. She strolled slowly home with her husband by a walk which they had been in the habit of taking on fine Sundays after morning service, but which they had never trodden together since Lola’s death. It was a round which skirted the common, and took them past a good many of the cottages, and their tenants had been wont to loiter at their gates on fine Sundays, in the hope of getting a passing word with the Squire and his wife. There had been something patriarchal, or clannish, in the feeling between landlord and tenant, labourer and master, which can only prevail in a parish where the chief landowner spends the greater part of his life at home.

To-day every one was just as respectful as of old; curtsies were as low and tones as reverential; but George Greswold and his wife felt there was a difference, all the same. A gulf had been cleft between them and their people by last summer’s calamity. It was not the kindred of the dead in whom this coolness was distinguishable. The bereaved seemed drawn nearer to their Squire by an affliction which had touched him too. But in Enderby parish there was a bond of kindred which seemed to interlink the whole population. There were not above three family names in the village, and everybody was everybody else’s cousin, when not a nearer relative. Thus, in dismissing his bailiff and dairy people, Mr. Greswold had given umbrage to almost all his cottagers. He was no longer regarded as a kind master. A man who could dismiss a servant after twenty years’ faithful service was, in the estimation of Enderby parish, a ruthless tyrant—a master whose yoke galled every shoulder.

“Him seemed to be so fond of we all,” said Luke Thomas, the village wheelwright, brother of that John Thomas who had been Mr. Greswold’s bailiff, and who was now dreeing his weird in Canada; “and yet offend he, and him can turn and sack yer as if yer was a thief—sweep yer off his premises like a handful o’ rubbish. Faithful service don’t count with he.”

George Greswold felt the change from friendly gladness to cold civility. He could see the altered expression in all those familiar faces. The only sign of affection was from Mrs. Rainbow, standing at her cottage gate in decent black, with sunken cheeks worn pale by many tears. She burst out crying at sight of Mildred Greswold, and clasped her hand in a fervour of sympathy.

“O, to think of your sweet young lady, ma’am! that you should lose her, as I lost my Polly!” she sobbed; and the two women wept together—sisters in affliction.

“You don’t think we are to blame, do you, Mrs. Rainbow?” Mildred said gently.

“No, no, indeed, ma’am. We all know it was God’s will. We must kiss the rod.”

“What fatalists these people are!” said Greswold, as he and his wife walked homeward by the sweet-smelling common, where the heather showed purple here and there, and where the harebells were beginning to dance upon the wind. “Yes, it is God’s will; but the name of that God is Nemesis.”

Husband and wife were almost silent during luncheon. Both were depressed by that want of friendliness in those who had been to them as familiar friends. To have forfeited confidence and affection was hard when they had done so much to merit both. Mildred could but remember how she and her golden-haired daughter had gone about amongst those people, caring for all their needs, spiritual and temporal, never approaching them from the standpoint of superiority, but treating them verily as friends. She recalled long autumn afternoons in the village reading-room, when she and Lola had presided over a bevy of matrons and elderly spinsters, she reading aloud to them while they worked, Lola threading needles to save elderly eyes, sewing on buttons, indefatigable in giving help of all kinds to those village sempstresses. She had fancied that those mothers’ meetings, the story-books, and the talk had brought them all into a bond of affectionate sympathy; and yet one act of stern justice seemed to have cancelled all obligations.

Mr. Greswold lighted a cigar after lunch, and went for a ramble in those extensive copses which were one of the charms of Enderby Manor, miles and miles of woodland walks, dark and cool in the hottest day of summer—lonely footpaths where the master of Enderby could think his own thoughts without risk of coming face to face with any one in that leafy solitude. The Enderby copses were cherished rather for pleasure than for profit, and were allowed to grow a good deal higher and a good deal wilder and thicker than the young wood upon neighbouring estates.

Mildred went to the drawing-room and to her piano, after her husband her chief companion and confidante now that Lola was gone. Music was her passion—the only art that moved her deeply, and to sit alone wandering from number to number of Beethoven and Mozart, Bach or Mendelssohn, was the very luxury of loneliness.

Adhering in all things to the rule that Sunday was not as other days, she had her library of sacred music apart from other volumes, and it was sacred music only which she played on Sundays. Her _répertoire_ was large, and she roamed at will among the classic masters of the last two hundred years, but for sacred music Bach and Mozart were her favourites.

She was playing a Gloria by the latter composer when she heard a carriage drive past the windows, and looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of a profile that startled her with a sudden sense of strangeness and familiarity. The carriage was a light T-cart, driven by a groom in the Hillersdon livery.

A visitor from Riverdale was a novelty, for, although George Greswold and Tom Hillersdon were friendly in the hunting-field, Riverdale and the Manor were not on visiting terms. The visit was for her husband, Mildred concluded, and she went on playing.

The door was opened by the new footman, who announced “Mr. Castellani.”

Mrs. Greswold rose from the piano to find herself face to face with the man whose countenance, seen in the distance, in the light of the east window, had reminded her of Judas. Seen as she saw him now, in the softer light of the afternoon, standing before her with a deprecating air in her own drawing-room, the stranger looked altogether different, and she thought he had a pleasing expression.

He was tall and slim, well dressed in a subdued metropolitan style; and he had an air of distinction and elegance which would have marked him anywhere as a creature apart from the common herd. It was not an English manner. There was a supple grace in his movements which suggested a Southern origin. There was a pleading look in the full brown eyes which suggested an emotional temperament.

“An Italian, no doubt,” thought Mildred, taking this Southern gracefulness in conjunction with the Southern name.

She wondered on what pretence this stranger had called, and what could be his motive for coming.

“Mrs. Greswold, I have to apologise humbly for presenting myself without having first sent you my credentials and waited for your permission to call,” he said, in very perfect English, with only the slightest Milanese accent; and then he handed Mrs. Greswold an unsealed letter, which he had taken from his breast-pocket.

She glanced at it hastily, not a little embarrassed by the situation. The letter was from an intimate friend, an amateur _littérateur_, who wrote graceful sonnets and gave pleasant parties:

“I need not excuse myself, my dear friend, for making Mr. Castellani known to you in the flesh, as I have no doubt he is already familiar to you in the spirit. He is the anonymous author of _Nepenthe_, the book that _almost every one_ has been reading and _quite every one_ has been talking about this season. Only the few can _understand_ it; but you are of those few, and I feel assured your _deepest_ feelings have been stirred by that _most exceptional_ work. How delicious it must be with you among green lanes and English meadows! We are just rushing off to a land of extinct volcanoes for my poor husband’s annual cure. _A vous de cœur_,

DIANA TOMKISON.”

“Pray sit down,” said Mildred, as she finished her gushing friend’s note; “my husband will be in presently—I hope in time to see you.”

“Pardon me if, in all humility, I say it is _you_ I was especially anxious to see, to know, if it were possible—delightful as it will be also to know Mr. Greswold. It is with your name that my past associations are interwoven.”

“Indeed! How is that?”

“It is a long story, Mrs. Greswold. To explain the association I must refer to the remote past. My grandfather was in the silk trade, like your grandfather.”

Mildred blushed; the assertion came upon her like an unpleasant surprise. It was a shock. That great house of silk merchants from which her father’s wealth had been derived had hardly ever been mentioned in her presence. Lord Castle-Connell’s daughter had never grown out of the idea that all trade is odious, and _her_ daughter had almost forgotten that her father had ever been in trade.

“Yes, when the house of Fausset was in its infancy the house of Felix & Sons, silk manufacturers and silk merchants, was one of the largest on the hillside of old Lyons. My great-grandfather was one of the richest men in Lyons, and he was able to help the clever young Englishman, your grandfather, who came into his house as corresponding clerk, to perfect himself in the French language, and to find out what the silk trade was like. He had a small capital, and when he had learnt something about the trade, he established himself near St. Paul’s Churchyard as a wholesale trader in a very small way. He had no looms of his own in those days; and it was the great house of Felix, and the credit given him by that house, which enabled him to hold his own, and to make a fortune. When your father began life the house of Felix was on the wane. Your grandfather had established a manufactory of his own at Lyons. Felix & Sons had grown old-fashioned. They had forgotten to march with the times. They had allowed themselves to go to sleep; and they were on the verge of bankruptcy when your father came to their rescue with a loan which enabled them to tide over their difficulties. They had had a lesson, and they profited by it. The house of Felix recovered its ascendency, and the loan was repaid before your father retired from business.”

“I am not surprised to hear that my father was generous. I should have been slow to believe that he could have been ungrateful,” said Mildred softly.

“Your name is among my earliest recollections,” pursued Castellani. “My mother was educated at a convent at Roehampton, and she was very fond of England and English people. The first journey I can distinctly remember was a journey to London, which occurred when I was ten years old. I remember my father and mother talking about Mr. Fausset. She had known him when she was a little girl. He used to stay in her father’s house when he came to Lyons on business. She would like to have seen him and his wife and daughter, for old times’ sake; but she had been told that his wife was a lady of rank, and that he had broken off all associations with his trading career. She was too diffident to intrude herself upon her father’s old ally. One day our carriage passed yours in the Park. Yes, I saw you, a golden-haired child—yes, madam, saw you with these eyes—and the vision has stayed with me, a sunny remembrance of my own childhood. I can see that fair child’s face in this room to-day.”

“You should have seen my daughter,” faltered Mildred sadly.

“You have a daughter?” said the stranger eagerly.

“I _had_ a daughter. She is gone. I only put off my black gown yesterday; but my heart and mind will wear mourning for her till I go to my grave.”

“Ah, madam, how deeply I sympathise with such a grief!” murmured Castellani.

He had a voice of peculiar depth and beauty—one of those rare voices whose every tone is music. The pathos and compassion in those few commonplace words moved Mildred to sudden tears. She commanded herself with an effort.

“I am much interested in your reminiscences,” she said, after a brief pause. “My father was very dear to me. My mother came of an old Irish family, and the Irish, as you know, are apt to be over-proud of high birth. I had never heard my father’s commercial life spoken about until to-day. I only knew him as an idle man, without business cares of any kind, able to take life pleasantly. He used to spend two or three months of every year under this roof. It was a terrible blow to me when we lost him six years ago, and I think my husband mourned him almost as deeply as I did. But tell me about your book. Are you really the author of _Nepenthe_, that nameless author who has been so much discussed?”

“And who has been identified with so many distinguished people—Mr. Gladstone—Cardinal Newman.”

“Mr. Swinburne—Mr. Browning. I have heard all kinds of speculations. And is it really you?”

“Yes, it is I. To you I may plead guilty, since, unfortunately, the authorship of _Nepenthe_ is now _le secret de Polichinelle_.”

“It is a—strange book,” said Mildred. “My husband and I were both interested in it, and impressed by it. But your book saddened us both. You seem to believe in nothing.”

“‘Seems,’ madam! nay, I know not ‘seems;’ but perhaps I am not so bad as you think me. I am of Hamlet’s temper—inquiring rather than disbelieving. To live is to doubt. And I own that I have seen enough of this life to discover that the richest gift Fate can give to man is the gift of forgetfulness.”

“I cannot think that. I would not forget, even if I could. It would be treason to forget the beloved ones we have lost.”

“Ah, Mrs. Greswold, most men have worse memories than the memory of the dead. The wounds we want healed are deeper than those made by Death; his scars we can afford to look upon. There are wounds that have gone deeper, and that leave an uglier mark.”

There was a pause. Mr. Castellani made no sign of departure. He evidently intended to wait for the Squire’s return. Through the open windows of a second drawing-room, divided from the first by an archway, they could see the servants setting out the tea-table on the lawn. A Turkey carpet was spread under the cedar, and there were basket-chairs of various shapes, cushioned, luxurious, and two or three small wicker-tables of different colours, and a milking-stool or two, and all the indications of out-door life. The one thing missing was that aerial figure, robed in white, which had been wont to flit about among the dancing shadows of branch and blossom—a creature as evanescent as they, it seemed to that mourning mother who remembered her to-day.

“Are you staying long at Riverdale?” asked Mildred presently, by way of conversation.

“If Mrs. Hillersdon would be good enough to have me, I would stay another fortnight. The place is perfect, the surrounding scenery has your true English charm, and my hostess is simply delightful.”

“You like her?” asked Mildred, interested.

No woman can help being curious about a woman with such a history as Mrs. Hillersdon’s. All the elements of romance and mystery seem, from the feminine standpoint, to concentre in such a career. How many hearts has such a woman broken; how many lives has she ruined; how often has she been on the brink of madness or suicide?—she, the placid matron, with her fat carriage-horses, and powdered footmen, and big prayer-book, and demure behaviour, and altogether bourgeois surroundings.

“Like her? Yes; she is such a clever woman.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, she is a marvel—the cleverest woman I know.”

He laid a stress on the superlative. His praise might mean anything—might be a hidden sneer. He might praise as the devil prays—backwards. Mildred had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not in earnest.

“Have you known her long?” she asked.

“Not very long; only this season. I am told that she is fickle, or that other people are fickle, and that she seldom knows any one more than a season. But I do not mean to be fickle; I mean to be a house-friend at Riverdale all my life if she will let me. She is a very clever woman, and thoroughly artistic.”

Mildred had not quite grasped the modern significance of this last word.

“Does Mrs. Hillersdon paint?” she asked.

“No, she does not paint.”

“She plays—or sings, I suppose?”

“No. I am told she once sang Spanish ballads with a guitar accompaniment; but the people who remember her singing tell me that her arms were the chief feature in the performance. Her arms are lovely to this day. No; she neither paints, nor plays, nor sings; but she is supremely artistic. She dresses as few women of five-and-forty know how to dress—dresses so as to make one think five-and-forty the most perfect age for a woman; and she has a marvellous appreciation of art, of painting, of poetry, of acting, of music. She is almost the only woman to whom I have ever played Beethoven who has seemed to me thoroughly _simpatica_.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mildred, surprised, “you yourself play, then?”

“It is hardly a merit in me,” answered Castellani modestly; “my father was one of the finest musicians of his time in Italy.”

“Indeed!”

“You are naturally surprised. His genius was poorly appreciated. His name was hardly known out of Milan and Brussels. Strange to say, those stolid Flemings appreciated him. His work was over the heads of the vulgar public. He saw such men as Verdi and Gounod triumphant, while he remained obscure.”

“But surely you admire Verdi and Gounod?”

“In their places, yes; both are admirable; but my father’s place should have been in a higher rank of composers. But let me not plague you about him. He is dead, and forgotten. He died crown-less. I heard you playing Mozart’s ‘Gloria’ as I came in. You like Mozart?”

“I adore him.”

“Yes, I know there are still people who like his music. Chopin did; asked for it on his death-bed,” said Castellani, with a wry face, as if he were talking of a vulgar propensity for sauerkraut or a morbid hankering for asafœtida.

“How I wish you would play something while we are waiting for my husband!” said Mildred, seeing her visitor’s gaze wandering to the open piano.

“If you will go into the garden and take your tea, I will play with delight while you take it. I doubt if I could play to you in cold blood. I know you are critical.”

“And you think I am not _simpatica_,” retorted Mildred, laughing at him. She was quite at her ease with him already, all thought of that Judas face in the church being forgotten. His half-deferential, half-caressing manner; his easy confidences about himself and his own tastes, had made her more familiar with his individuality in the space of an hour than she would have been with the average Englishman in a month. She did not know whether she liked or disliked him; but he amused her, and it was a new sensation for her to feel amused.

She sauntered softly out to the lawn, and he began to play.

Heavens, what a touch! Was it really _her_ piano which answered with tones so exquisite—which gave forth such thrilling melody? He played an improvised arrangement of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and she stood entranced till the last dying _arpeggio_ melted into silence. No one could doubt that he came of a race gifted in music.

“Pray don’t leave the piano,” she said softly, from her place by the open window.

“I will play till you call me away,” he answered, as he began Chopin’s Etude in C sharp minor.

That weird and impassioned composition reached its close just as George Greswold approached from a little gate on the other side of the lawn. Mildred went to meet him, and Castellani left the piano and came out of the window to be presented to his host.

Nothing could be more strongly marked than the contrast between the two men, as they stood facing each other in the golden light of afternoon. Greswold, tall, broad-shouldered, rugged-looking, in his rough brown heather suit and deerstalker cap, carrying a thick stick, with an iron fork at the end of it, for the annihilation of chance weeds in his peregrinations. His fine and massive features had a worn look, his cheeks were hollow, his dark hair and beard were grizzled here and there, his dark complexion had lost the hue of youth. He looked ten years older than his actual age.

Before him stood the Italian, graceful, gracious in every line and every movement; his features delicately chiselled, his eyes dark, full, and bright; his complexion of that milky pallor which is so often seen with hair tending towards red; his brown beard of silkiest texture; his hands delicately modelled and of ivory whiteness; his dress imbued with all the grace which a fashionable tailor can give to the clothes of a man who cultivates the beautiful, even in the barren field of nineteenth century costume. It was impossible that so marked a contrast could escape Mildred’s observation altogether; yet she perceived it dimly. The picture came back to her memory afterwards in more vivid colours.

She made the necessary introduction, and then proceeded to pour out the tea, leaving the two men to talk to each other.

“Your name has an Italian sound,” Greswold said presently.

“It is a Milanese name. My father was a native of Milan; my mother was French, but she was educated in England, and all her proclivities were English. It was at her desire my father sent me to Rugby, and afterwards to Cambridge. Her fatal illness called me back to Italy immediately after I had got my degree, and it was some years before I again visited England.”

“Were you in Italy all that time?” asked Greswold, looking down absently, and with an unwonted trouble in his face.

Mildred sat at the tea-table, the visitor waiting upon her, insisting upon charging himself with her husband’s cup as well as his own; an attention and reversal of etiquette of which Mr. Greswold seemed unconscious. Kassandra had returned with her master from a long walk, and was lying at his feet in elderly exhaustion. She saluted the stranger with a suppressed growl when he approached with the tea-cups. Kassandra adored her own people, but was not remarkable for civility to strangers.

“Yes; I wasted four or five years in the South—in Florence, in Venice, or along the Riviera, wandering about like Satan, not having made up my mind what to do in the world.”

Greswold was silent, bending down to play with Kassandra, who wagged her tail with a gentle largo movement, in grateful contentment.

“You must have heard my father’s name when you were at Milan,” said Castellani. “His music was fashionable _there_.”

Mildred looked up with a surprised expression. She had never heard her husband talk of Milan, and yet this stranger mentioned his residence there as if it were an established fact.

“How did you know I was ever at Milan?” asked Greswold, looking up sharply.

“For the simplest of reasons. I had the honour of meeting you on more than one occasion at large assemblies, where my insignificant personality would hardly impress itself upon your memory. And I met you a year later at Lady Lochinvar’s palace at Nice, soon after your first marriage.”

Mildred looked up at her husband. He was pale as ashes, his lips whitening as she gazed at him. She felt her own cheeks paling; felt a sudden coldness creeping over her, as if she were going to faint. She watched her husband dumbly, expecting him to tell this man that he was mistaken, that he was confounding him, George Greswold, with some one else; but Greswold sat silent, and presently, as if to hide his confusion, bent again over the dog, who got up suddenly and licked his face in a gush of affection—as if she knew—as if she knew.

He had been married before, and he had told his wife not one word of that first marriage. There had been no hint of the fact that he was a widower when he asked John Fausset for his daughter’s hand.