reply respectfully, in her usual quiet manner; her pale
cheeks showing no change of colour, her faint blue eyes resting
steadily on her mistress's face. Iris went on:

"If I ask you to keep what has happened, on this dreadful day, a secret
from everybody, may I trust you--little as you know of me--as I might
have trusted Rhoda Bennet?"

"I promise it, Miss." In saying those few words, the undemonstrative
woman seemed to think that she had said enough.

Iris had no alternative but to ask another favour.

"And whatever curiosity you may feel, will you be content to do me a
kindness--without wanting an explanation?"

"It is my duty to respect my mistress's secrets; I will do my duty." No
sentiment, no offer of respectful sympathy; a positive declaration of
fidelity, left impenetrably to speak for itself. Was the girl's heart
hardened by the disaster which had darkened her life? Or was she the
submissive victim of that inbred reserve, which shrinks from the frank
expression of feeling, and lives and dies self-imprisoned in its own
secrecy? A third explanation, founded probably on a steadier basis, was
suggested by Miss Henley's remembrance of their first interview.
Fanny's nature had revealed a sensitive side, when she was first
encouraged to hope for a refuge from ruin followed perhaps by
starvation and death. Judging so far from experience, a sound
conclusion seemed to follow. When circumstances strongly excited the
girl, there was a dormant vitality in her that revived. At other times
when events failed to agitate her by a direct appeal to personal
interests, her constitutional reserve held the rule. She could be
impenetrably honest, steadily industrious, truly grateful--but the
intuitive expression of feeling, on ordinary occasions, was beyond her
reach.

After an interval of nearly half an hour, Mr. Vimpany made his
appearance. Pausing in the doorway, he consulted his watch, and entered
on a calculation which presented him favourably from a professional
point of view.

"Allow for time lost in reviving my lord when he fainted, and stringing
him up with a drop of brandy, and washing my hands (look how clean they
are!), I haven't been more than twenty minutes in mending his throat.
Not bad surgery, Miss Henley."

"Is his life safe, Mr. Vimpany?"

"Thanks to his luck--yes."

"His luck?"

"To be sure! In the first place, he owes his life to your finding him
when you did; a little later, and it would have been