nd, when
in due time it reached the painter's house. Valentine rather approved of
the scandal than not, because it was likely to lead inquisitive people
in the wrong direction. He might have been now perfectly easy about the
preservation of his secret, but for the distrust which still clung to
him, in spite of himself, on the subject of Mrs. Peckover's discretion.
He never wearied of warning that excellent woman to be careful in
keeping the important secret, every time she came to London to see
Madonna. Whether she only paid them a visit for the day, and then went
away again; or whether she spent her Christmas with them,
Valentine's greeting always ended nervously with the same distrustful
question:--"Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Peckover, but are you quite sure
you have kept what you know about little Mary and her mother, and dates
and places and all that, properly hidden from prying people, since you
were here last?" At which point Mrs. Peckover generally answered by
repeating, always with the same sarcastic emphasis:--"Properly hidden,
did you say, sir? Of course I keep what I know properly hidden, for of
course I can hold my tongue. In my time, sir, it used always to take two
parties to play at a game of Hide and Seek. Who in the world is seeking
after little Mary, I should like to know?"

Perhaps Mrs. Peckover's view of the case was the right one; or, perhaps,
the extraordinary discretion observed by the persons who were in the
secret of Madonna's history, prevented any disclosure of the girl's
origin from reaching her father or friends--presuming them to be still
alive and anxiously looking for her. But, at any rate, this much at
least is certain:--Nobody appeared to assert a claim to Valentine's
adopted child, from the time when he took her home with him as his
daughter, to the time when the reader first made his acquaintance, many
pages back, in the congenial sphere of his own painting-room.*

* See note at the end of the book.

CHAPTER VIII. MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS.

It is now some time since we left Mr. Blyth and Madonna in the studio.
The first was engaged, it may be remembered, in the process of brushing
up Bacchanalian Nymphs in the foreground of a Classical landscape. The
second was modestly occupied in making a copy of the head of the Venus
de' Medici.

The clock strikes one--and a furious ring is heard at the house-bell.

"There he is!" cries Mr. Blyth to himself. "There's Zack! I know his