Jaquetta used to wonder at them, and then try to go on the same as usual; and would wander about the garden and park with her dogs, and bring us in little anecdotes, and do all the laughing over them herself.  Poor child! she felt as if she were in a bad dream, and these were efforts to shake it off, and wake herself.

After all, nothing was ever so bad as those ten days!  But, my brother always said he was thankful for the respite and time for thought which they gave him.

CHAPTER III.  THE PEERAGE CASE.

The end came suddenly at last, when we were thinking my dear father more tranquil.  He passed away in sleep late one evening, just ten days after Hester’s arrival.  She had gone back to her lodgings, and we did not send to tell her till the morning; but by nine o’clock she was in the house.

We had crept down to breakfast, Jaquetta and I, feeling very dreary in the half-light, and as if desolation had suddenly come on us; and when we heard her fly drive up to the door, Jaquetta cried out almost angrily, “Torwood, how could you!” and we would have run away, but he said, “Stay, dear girls; it is better to have it over.”

As she came in he rang the bell as if for family prayers, and she had only asked one or two questions, which he answered shortly, when all the servants came in, some crying sadly.  Fulk read a very few prayers—­as much as he had voice for, and then, as all stood up, he had to clear his voice, but he spoke firmly enough.

“It is right that you all should know that a grave doubt has arisen as to my position here.  Lord Trevorsham had every reason to believe his first wife had perished by the hands of the Red Indians long before he married my mother.  What he did was done in entire ignorance—­no breath of blame must light on him.  This lady alleges that she can produce proofs that she is his daughter, and that her mother only died in February, ’36.  If these proofs be considered satisfactory by a committee of the House of Lords, then she and Alured Torwood Trevor will be shown to be his only legitimate children.  I shall place the matter in the right hands as soon as possible—­that is” (for she was glaring at him), “as soon as the funeral is over.  Until that decision is made I request that no one will call me by the title of him who is gone; but I shall remain here to take care of my little brother, whose guardian my father wished me to be; and for the present, at least, I shall make no change in the establishment.”

I think everyone held their breath:  there was a great stillness over all—­a sort of hush of awe—­and then some of the maids began sobbing, and the butler tried to say something, but he quite broke down; and just then a troubled voice cried out—­

“Torwood, Torwood, what is this?”

And there we saw Bertram in the midst of us, with the haggard look of a man who had travelled all night, and a dismayed air that I can never forget.