?"

Still examining the housekeeper with mingled feelings of interest and
distrust, Alban answered ungraciously:

"Yes."

"Good-tempered?"

Alban again said "Yes."

"So much about herself," Mrs. Rook remarked. "About her family now?" She
shifted her bag restlessly from one hand to another. "Perhaps you can
tell me if Miss Emily's father--" she suddenly corrected herself--"if
Miss Emily's parents are living?"

"I don't know."

"You mean you won't tell me."

"I mean exactly what I have said."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," Mrs. Rook rejoined; "I shall find out at the
school. The first turning to the left, I think you said--across the
fields?"

He was too deeply interested in Emily to let the housekeeper go without
putting a question on his side:

"Is Sir Jervis Redwood one of Miss Emily's old friends?" he asked.

"He? What put that into your head? He has never even seen Miss Emily.
She's going to our house--ah, the women are getting the upper hand now,
and serve the men right, I say!--she's going to our house to be Sir
Jervis's secretary. You would like to have the place yourself, wouldn't
you? You would like to keep a poor girl from getting her own living?
Oh, you may look as fierce as you please--the time's gone by when a man
could frighten _me_. I like her Christian name. I call Emily a nice name
enough. But 'Brown'! Good-morning, Mr. Morris; you and I are not cursed
with such a contemptibly common name as that! 'Brown'? Oh, Lord!"

She tossed her head scornfully, and walked away, humming a tune.

Alban stood rooted to the spot. The effort of his later life had been to
conceal the hopeless passion which had mastered him in spite of himself.
Knowing nothing from Emily--who at once pitied and avoided him--of her
family circumstances or of her future plans, he had shrunk from making
inquiries of others, in the fear that they, too, might find out his
secret, and that their contempt might be added to the contempt which he
felt for himself. In this position, and with these obstacles in his
way, the announcement of Emily's proposed journey--under the care of
a stranger, to fill an employment in the house of a stranger--not
only took him by surprise, but inspired him with a strong feeling of
distrust. He looked after Sir Jervis Redwood's flighty housekeeper,
completely forgetting the purpose which had brought him thus far on the
way to his lodgings. Before Mrs. Rook was out of sight, Alban Morris was
following he