The baronet thought of the letter, and turned very pale.

“Her mother?  I do not understand.  What of her mother?”

“Only this”—­Lady Kingsland arose as she spoke, her face deathly white, her pale eyes glittering—­“the mother is a myth and a mystery.  Report says Captain Hunsden was married in America—­no one knows where—­and America is a wide place.  No one ever saw the wife; no one ever heard Miss Hunsden speak of her mother; no one ever heard of that mother’s death.  I leave Sir Everard Kingsland to draw his own inferences.”

She swept from the room with a mighty rustle of silk.  A dark figure crouching on the rug, with its ear to the keyhole, barely had time to whisk behind a tall Indian cabinet as the door opened.

It was Miss Sybilla Silver, who was already asserting her prerogative as amateur lady’s-maid.

My lady shut herself up in her own room for the remainder of the evening, too angry and mortified for words to tell.  It was the first quarrel she and her idolized son ever had, and the disappointment of all her ambitious hopes left her miserable enough.

But scarcely so miserable as Sir Everard.  To be hopelessly in love on such short notice was bad enough; to have the dread of a rejection hanging over him was worse; but to have this dark mystery looming horribly in the horizon was worst of all.

His mother’s insinuations alone would not have disturbed him; but those insinuations, taken in unison with Captain Hunsden’s mysterious illness of the morning, drove him nearly wild.

“And I dare not even ask,” he thought, “or set my doubts at rest.  Any inquiry from me, before proposing, would be impertinent; and after proposing they would be too late.  But one thing I am certain of—­if I lose Harrie Hunsden, I shall go mad!”

While he tore up and down like a caged tiger, the door softly opened and his sister looked in.

“Alone, Everard?” she said, timidly, “I thought mamma was with you.”

“Mamma has just gone to her room in a blessed temper,” answered her brother, savagely.  “Come in Milly, and help me in this horrible scrape, if you can.”

“Is it something about—­Miss Hunsden?” hesitatingly.  “I thought mamma looked displeased at dinner.”

“Displeased!” exclaimed the young man, with a short laugh; “that is a mild way of putting it.  Mamma is inclined to play the Grand Mogul in my case as she did with you and poor Fred Douglas.”

“Oh, brother!”

“Forgive me, Milly.  I’m a brute and you’re an angel, if there ever was one on earth!  But I’ve been hectored and lectured, and badgered and bothered until I’m fairly beside myself.  She wants me to marry Lady Louise, and I won’t marry Lady Louise if she was the last woman alive.  Milly, who was Miss Hunsden’s mother?”

“Her mother?  I’m sure I don’t know.  I was quite a little girl when Captain Hunsden was here before, and Harrie was a pretty little curly-haired fairy of three years.  I remember her so well.  Captain Hunsden dined here once or twice, and I recollect perfectly how gloomy and morose his manner was.  I was quite frightened at him.  You were at Eton then, you know.”