“I deserve it, but it is very hard to bear,” she thought, just as Mrs. Dobson appeared and bowing respectfully, began: 

“Hannah tells me you are kin to the governor’s folks,—­his cousin, I reckon—­and I am so sorry they are all, gone, and will be yet for some weeks.  The governor is at a water cure down East—­strange you didn’t hear of it—­and t’other Mr. Markham has gone with his wife to Olney, and St. Paul, and dear knows where.  Too bad, ain’t it?  But maybe you’ll stay a day or two and rest?  We’ll make you as comfortable as we can.  You look about beat out,” and Mrs. Dobson came nearer to Ethelyn, whose face and lips were white as ashes, and whose eyes looked almost black with her excitement.

She was very tired.  The rapid journey, made without rest or food either, save the cup of tea and cracker she tried to swallow, was beginning to tell upon her, and while Mrs. Dobson was speaking she felt stealing over her the giddiness which she knew was a precursor to fainting.

“I am tired and heated,” she gasped.  “I could not sleep at the hotel or eat, either.  I will stay a day and rest, if you please.  Rich—­Governor Markham will not care; I was traveling this way, and thought I would call.  I have heard so much about his house.”

She felt constrained to say this by way of explanation, and Mrs. Dobson accepted it all, warming up at once on the subject of the house—­that was her weak point; while to show strangers through the handsome rooms was her delight.  No opportunity to do this had for some time been presented, and the good woman’s face glowed with the pleasure she anticipated from showing the governor’s cousin his house and grounds.  But first the lady must have some dinner, and bidding her lay aside her bonnet and shawl and make herself at home, she hurried back to the kitchen and dispatched Hannah for the tender lamb-chop she was going to broil, as that was something easily cooked, and the poor girl seemed so tired and feeble.

“She looks like the Markhams, or like somebody I’ve seen,” she said, never dreaming of finding the familiar resemblance to “somebody she had seen” in the picture hanging in Richard’s room.

What she would have done had she known who the stranger was is doubtful.  Fortunately she did not know; but being hospitably inclined, and feeling anxious to show the governor’s Eastern relatives how grand and nice they were, she broiled the tender lamb, and made the fragrant coffee, and laid the table in the cozy breakfast-room, and put on the little silver set, and then conducted her visitor out to dinner, helping her herself, and leaving the room with the injunction to ring if she wanted anything, as Hannah was within hearing.  Terribly bewildered and puzzled with regard to her own identity, Ethie sat down to Richard’s table, in Richard’s house, and partook of Richard’s food, with a strange feeling of quiet, and a constantly increasing sensation of numbness and bewilderment.  Access to the house