you may, my good girl. I think you are a favorite with Miss
Gourlay?"

"Ha, ha!" thought Nancy, "I am sure of it now."

"That's more than I know, sir," she replied. "Miss Gourlay--God bless
and protect her--was kind to every one; and not more so to me than to
the other servants."

"I have just been informed by Gibson, that she and her maid left the
Hall on Tuesday night last. Now, answer me truly, and you shall be the
better for it. Have you any conception, any suspicion, let us say, where
they have gone to?"

"La, sir, sure your honor ought to know that better than me."

"How so, my pretty girl? How should I know it? She told me nothing about
it."

"Why, wasn't it your honor and Tom Gillespie that took her away in the
carriage on that very night?"

Here now was wit against wit, or at least cunning against cunning.
Nancy, the adroit, hazarded an assertion of which she was not certain,
in order to probe the baronet, and place him in a position by which she
might be able by his conduct and manner to satisfy herself whether her
suspicions were well-founded or not.

"But how do you know, my good girl, that I and Gillespie were out that
night?"

It is unnecessary to repeat here circumstances with which the reader is
already acquainted. Nancy gave him the history of Mrs. Morgan's sudden
illness, and all the other facts already mentioned.

"But there is one thing that I still cannot understand," replied the
baronet, "which is, that the disappearance of Miss Gourlay was never
mentioned to me until I inquired for her maid, whom I wished to speak
with."

"But sure that's very natural, sir," replied Nancy; "the reason we
didn't speak to you upon the subject was because we thought that it was
your honor who brought her away; and that as you took such a late hour
in the night for it, you didn't wish that we should know anything about
it."

The baronet's eye fell upon her severely, as if he doubted the truth
of what she said. Nancy's eye, however, neither avoided his nor quailed
before it. She now spoke the truth, and she did so, in order to prevent
herself and the other servants from incurring his resentment by their
silence.

"Very well," observed Sir Thomas, calmly, but sternly. "I think you have
spoken what you believe to be the truth, and what, for all you know, may
be the truth. But observe my words: let this subject be never
breathed nor uttered by any domestic in my establishment. Tell your
fellow-servants