guilty
remembrances--innocently excited by herself! How had they injured him?
Of what infamy, on their parts, did his beloved and stainless memory
remind them? Who could fathom the mystery of it? "What does it mean?"
she cried, looking wildly in Alban's compassionate face. "You _must_
have formed some idea of your own. What does it mean?"

"Come, and sit down, Miss Emily. We will try if we can find out what it
means, together."

They returned to the shady solitude under the trees. Away, in front of
the house, the distant grating of carriage wheels told of the arrival of
Miss Ladd's guests, and of the speedy beginning of the ceremonies of the
day.

"We must help each other," Alban resumed.

"When we first spoke of Mrs. Rook, you mentioned Miss Cecilia Wyvil as
a person who knew something about her. Have you any objection to tell me
what you may have heard in that way?"

In complying with his request Emily necessarily repeated what Cecilia
had told Francine, when the two girls had met that morning in the
garden.

Alban now knew how Emily had obtained employment as Sir Jervis's
secretary; how Mr. and Mrs. Rook had been previously known to Cecilia's
father as respectable people keeping an inn in his own neighborhood;
and, finally, how they had been obliged to begin life again in domestic
service, because the terrible event of a murder had given the inn a bad
name, and had driven away the customers on whose encouragement their
business depended.

Listening in silence, Alban remained silent when Emily's narrative had
come to an end.

"Have you nothing to say to me?" she asked.

"I am thinking over what I have just heard," he answered.

Emily noticed a certain formality in his tone and manner, which
disagreeably surprised her. He seemed to have made his reply as a mere
concession to politeness, while he was thinking of something else which
really interested him.

"Have I disappointed you in any way?" she asked.

"On the contrary, you have interested me. I want to be quite sure that
I remember exactly what you have said. You mentioned, I think, that your
friendship with Miss Cecilia Wyvil began here, at the school?"

"Yes."

"And in speaking of the murder at the village inn, you told me that the
crime was committed--I have forgotten how long ago?"

His manner still suggested that he was idly talking about what she
had told him, while some more important subject for reflection was in
possession of his mind.