“It is what you always do do, before you have been an hour there,” I observed.

“Jane, in Heaven’s name leave those things alone!  Is this sort of thing all you came in for?”

“No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux’s letter.”

“No, I have not; her writing is too bad for anything.  Besides, I know exactly what she has got to say.  She has at last found the religion which she has been looking for all her life, and she intends to be whatever it is for evermore.”

“That is not all.  She wants to come and stay here for a few days.”

“What!  Here?  Now?  Why, what—­oh, I forgot the ghost!  By Jove!  You see, Jane, there are some advantages in having one on the premises when it procures you a visit from a social star like Mrs. Molyneux.  But where are you going to put her?  Not in the bachelor’s room, where your poor uncle made such a night of it?  It wouldn’t hold her dressing bag, let alone herself.”

“Oh, but I hope the pink room will be ready.  The plasterer from Whitford came out yesterday to apologise, and said he had been keeping his birthday.”

“Indeed! and how many times a year does he have a birthday?”

“I don’t know, but he was quite sober; and he did the most of it yesterday and will finish it to-day, so it will be all right.”

“When is she coming, then?”

“To-morrow.  You would have seen that if you had read the letter.  And there is a message for you in it, too.”

“Then find me the place, like an angel; I cannot wade through all these sheets of hieroglyphics.  In the postscript?  Let me see:  ’Tell Sir George I look forward to explaining to him the religious teaching which I have been studying for months.’  Months!  Come; there must be something in a religion which Mrs. Molyneux sticks to for months at a time—­’studying for months under the guidance of its great apostle Baron Zinkersen—­’ What is this name?  ’The deeper I go into it all the more I feel in it that faith, satisfying to the reason as well as to the emotions, for which I have been searching all my life.  It is certainly the religion of the future’—­future underlined—­’and I believe it will please even Sir George, for it so distinctly coincides with his own favourite theories.’  Favourite theories, indeed!  I haven’t any.  My mind is as open as day to truth from any quarter.  Only I distrust apostles with no vowels in their names ever since that one, two years ago, made off with the spoons.”

“No, George, he did not take any plate.  It was money, and money Lucinda gave him herself for bringing her letters from her father.”

“Where was her father, then?” I inquired, much interested.

“Well, he was—­a—­he was dead,” answered Lady Atherley; “and after some time, a very low sort of person called upon Lucinda and said she wrote all the letters; but Lucinda could not get the money back without going to law, as some people wished her to do; but I am glad she did not, as I think the papers would have said very unpleasant things about it.”