had been easier than she fancied; but she could not help feeling that she had no right to be there, no claim on Richard’s hospitality.  Certainly she had none, if what she had heard at Clifton were true.  But was it?  There was some doubt creeping into her mind, though why Richard should wish to build so large and so fine a house just for himself alone she could not understand.  She never guessed how every part of that dwelling had been planned with a direct reference to her and her tastes; that not a curtain, or a carpet, or a picture had been purchased without Melinda’s having said she believed Ethie would approve it.  Every stone, and plank and tack, and nail had in it a thought of the Ethie whose coming back had been speculated upon and planned in so many different ways, but never in this way—­never just as it had finally occurred, with Richard gone, and no one there to welcome her, save the servants in the kitchen, who, while she ate her solitary dinner, feeling more desolate and wretched than she had ever before felt in her life, wondered who she was, and how far they ought to go with their attentions and civilities.  They were not suspicious, but took her for what she professed to be—­a Markham, and a near connection of the governor; and as that stamped her somebody, they were inclined to be very civil, feeling sure that Mrs. James would heartily approve their course.  She had rung no bell for Hannah; but they knew her dinner was over, for they heard her as she went back into the reception-room, where Mrs. Dobson ere long joined her, and asked if she would like to see the house.

“It’s the only thing we can amuse you with, unless you are fond of music.  Maybe you are,” and Mrs. Dobson led the way to a little music-room, where, in the recess of a bow window a closed piano was standing.

At first Ethelyn did not observe it closely; but when the housekeeper opened it, and pushing back the heavy drapery, disclosed it fully to view, Ethie started forward with a sudden cry of wonder and surprise, while her face was deathly pale, and the fingers which came down with a crash upon the keys shook violently, for she knew it was her old instrument standing there before her—­the one she had sold to procure money for her flight.  Richard must have bought it back; for her sake, too, or rather for the sake of what she once was to him, not what she was now.

“Play, won’t you?” Mrs. Dobson said.  But Ethie could not then have touched a note.  The faintest tone of that instrument would have maddened her and she turned away from it with a shudder, while the rather talkative Mrs. Dobson continued:  “It’s an old piano, I believe, that belonged to the first Mrs. Markham.  There’s to be a new one bought for the other Mrs. Markham, I heard them say.”