“Mary has gone to bed,” she said quietly.  “She is very much upset by this business.  It appears there was something between her and Mr Carey.  She expected him to come back for her—­”

“What!  Mary?” cried Rose, waiting with Frances to say goodnight.

“There!” triumphed Frances, “what did I say?”

“Mary!” their father echoed Rose’s surprised tone.  “The dickens!  You don’t say so.  Poor little soul!  Poor little girlie!  Well, I never thought of that.  Did you, Deb?”

“Never, father.  Not for a moment.”

“I suppose it was the child.  It must have been the child.”  Mr Pennycuick was deeply concerned.  “I wonder why he never said anything,” he addressed Deb, when Rose and Frances had been sent to bed.  “Eh, Deb?  Seems strange, don’t it?  We had so much talk together.  Quite like a sort of son, he was.  Aye, I could have made a son of that fellow.  Poor lad!—­poor lad!  Suppose he thought it wasn’t the straight thing to bind a girl of ours till he was in a better position—­it’d be just like him.  Well—­but Mary, of all people!” (This was the puzzle to all.) “It must have been the baby.  She certainly did dote on that child, and ’love me, love my dog’—­eh?  But to think of her keeping it so close all that time!  Afraid I’d make a fuss, I suppose.  You could have told her, Deb, that I don’t stand in my children’s way for the sake of my own feelings; and a Carey of Wellwood isn’t for us to sniff at either, if he is poor.  A Carey has been good enough for a Pennycuick before today.  God!  I wish I’d known.  I might have got him something better to do, and saved them both from this.  Poor old girl!  Is she very bad, Debbie?  Shall I go and talk to her a bit?”

“I wouldn’t tonight, father, if I were you,” replied Deb, with a weary air.  “She is quieter now, and I have given her something to send her to sleep.  I will keep my door open, and go and look at her through the night.  I think she will be better tomorrow.”

On the morrow Mary was at least more self-controlled.  She came amongst her family with the look of one who had passed through an illness, and shrinking from the first words and glances.  But they all gathered her to their hearts, and murmured loving sympathy in her ears, and tenderly fussed over her and waited upon her.  Her father took her to his sanctum, and showed her his old daguerreotype and valentine, and told her they should be hers at his death.  Miss Keene excited as an old maid is over anybody’s love affair, wanted to take over the house-keeping as well as the doing of the flowers, in order to leave the mourner free to enjoy the full luxury of her state.  The governess, assumed to be above love affairs, was very strict with Frances, holding her to tasks set on purpose to prevent her from teasing her eldest sister.  But Frances had informed the servants overnight that Mr Carey was drowned, and that he had been Miss Pennycuick’s affianced husband all