a wistful curiosity.  He did not really care where Percival went, but he would have given much for such a word about his plans as would have proved to Harriet, and to himself too, that his boy did confide in him sometimes.  It was not to be, however.  Young Thorne had taken up the local paper and the subject dropped.  Mr. Thorne may have guessed later, but he never knew where his roan horse went the next day.

CHAPTER II.

“THOSE EYES OF YOURS.”

Not five miles away that same evening a conversation was going on which would have interested Mrs. Middleton.

The scene was an up-stairs room in a pleasant house near the county town.  Mrs. Blake, a woman of seven or eight and forty, handsome and well preserved, but of a high-colored type, leant back in an easy-chair lazily unfastening her bracelets, by way of signifying that she had begun to prepare for the night.  Her two daughters were with her.  Addie, the elder, was at the looking-glass brushing her hair and half enveloped in its silky blackness.  She was a tall, graceful girl, a refined likeness of her mother.  On the rug lay Lottie, three years younger, hardly more than a growing girl, long-limbed, slight, a little abrupt and angular by her sister’s side, her features not quite so regular, her face paler in its cloud of dark hair.  Yet there was a look of determination and power which was wanting in Addie; and at times, when Lottie was roused, her eyes had a dark splendor which made her sister’s beauty seem comparatively commonplace and tame.

Stretched at full length, she propped her chin on her hands and looked up at her mother.  “I don’t suppose you care,” she said, in a clear, almost boyish voice.

“Not much,” Mrs. Blake replied with, a smile.  “Especially as I rather doubt it.”

Addie paused, brush in hand:  “I really think you’ve made a mistake, Lottie.”

“Do you really?  I haven’t, though,” said that young lady decidedly.

“It can’t be—­surely,” Addie hesitated, with a little shadow on her face.

“Of course no.  Is it likely?” said Mrs. Blake, as if the discussion were closed.

“I tell you,” said Lottie stubbornly, “Godfrey Hammond told me that Percival’s father was the eldest son.”

“But it is Horace who has always lived at Brackenhill.  Percival only goes on a visit now and then.  Every one knows,” said Addie, in almost an injured tone, “that Horace is the heir.”

Lottie raised her head a little and eyed her sister intently, with amusement, wonder, and a little scorn in her glance.  Addie, blissfully unconscious, went on brushing her hair, still with that look of anxious perplexity.

“This is how it was,” Lottie exclaimed suddenly.  “Percival was just gone, and you were talking to Horace.  Up comes Godfrey Hammond, sits down by me, and says some rubbish about consoling me.  I think I laughed.  Then he looked at me out of his little, light eyes, and said that you and I seemed to get on well with his young friends.  So I said, ‘Oh yes—­middling.’”