Everybody saw this. He looked black and
thwarted as a thunder-storm. "How can
you pretend to recollect anything about your
mother?" he said, avoiding her eye. "She
died as mad us a March hare, more than
five-and-thirty years ago. You were a mere
baby of four years old when you went to live
at Carghill. It is impossible you can recollect
anything."

"Come up to the girls' room, and I will
prove to you that I am right."

"A persistent woman always has her will,"
said Sir Jasper, sourly.

They went up-stairs together, Sir Jasper
in no very pleasant temper. Olivia was
writing at the centre table when they
entered; and, instead of heeding what Mrs.
Chetwynde was saying, he leant over the
girl, teasing her about her letter—Was it to
her lover, or to one of her many dearest
friends? He looked not quite master of
himself, and behaved in a way unusual to
him.

"Now, Sir Jasper, do not attempt to say
you don't believe me now!" said Mrs.
Chetwynde, standing on the hearth, and looking
at him steadily. "I saw the startled look
in your eye as we came in at the door.
Something in this place strikes your memory,
too."

"I never saw the room in my life before,"
growled the baronet pettishly.

She marched up to him, and made him face
her, as she enunciated the following question
with a suppressed vehemence that was
painful to see and to hear:

"Sir Jasper, have you no recollection of a
sick woman lying here on a hard bed with a
shrieking child clinging round her neck? Have
you no recollection of a pitiless intruder
tearing them apart? If you have not, your
memory is failing you. You were the
pitiless intruder. I saw you with the ridge
of curls rising on your head, as it used to
do, when you leant over Livy, just now.
You have dressed your hair in that old way
again."

Sir Jasper laughed, but not naturally.

"Charlotte, my tragedy queen, it is a new
wig. My doctor bade me wear a wig. So I
did it. I'll tell the maker, that he may use
your blunder as a puffing advertisement."

Mrs. Chetwynde let her hand drop heavily
upon his arm. "Sir Jasper," she said, "I
will have it out of you. Ridicule will not put
me off the track. Nothing shall put me off it.
Where did your elder brother's wife die;—
mind, I say his wife?"

Sir Jasper shrugged his shoulders
compassionately. "Now, Charlotte, what is the
good of this scene?" he asked, persuasively.
"Your pride will make you mad. Your
fancies are almost as outrageous and
extravagant as your poor mother's delusions
were."

"Would you make me out crazed, because
I would unmask—"

"Unmask what? Didn't I save your
mother and you from starvation?"

"You had your interest in it! " retorted
Mrs. Chetwynde. "Every seeming good act
you ever did, had its base motive. Who
made my mother write those self-accusatory
letters you once showed me? Never were
they done of her own free will! They were
far more like the composition of a romancist,
than the outpouring of a heart-broken and
dishonoured woman!" Mrs. Chetwynde's
voice was loud and passionate: her husband
and the rest came up to see what was the
matter. As she went on railing at Sir
Jasper, her husband soothingly said: "Hush,
my dear Charlotte, hush! Remember the
children."

"I do remember them. I call them all
to witness, that I here declare Sir Jasper
Carghill to have been my worst enemy and
theirs, and my mother's most of all. He has
tampered with the truth. I believe that,
for his own vile ends, he has cast a false
blot upon his brother's name. See how he
shrinks from my eye. Look at him, observe
him! See how he quivers and shrinks from
me!"

Sir Jasper declined to submit to such a
general scrutiny, and slunk out of the room,
saying: "I'm sorry for you, George; but it
is very clear that the excitement has been
too much for her, with the strong hereditary
predisposition to insanity. She is her wretched
mother over again."

He left the house; and Mr. Chetwynde,
fearful of he dared not acknowledge what,
bent all his efforts to the soothing and
quieting of his wife's mind.

She would not be soothed: she would not
be quieted. She would not give up one of her
assertions, or admit for a moment that she
might be mistaken. Ordinarily, she was a
woman of plain sound sense, possessing an
even cheerful temper. She was not prone to
whims or fancies of any kind; but, when she
conceived an idea, or a suspicion, she held it
fast with singular tenacity. Sir Jasper's
cruel suggestion wore an air of great plausibility.
Reverses of fortune have thrown fine
minds off their balance often, and it did,
indeed, seem like the trick of a disordered
imagination, that Mrs. Chetwynde should
speak of herself as remembering events that
had happened in her babyhood, forty years
before. Her husband reasoned with her in
vain, but he would not believe her. The only
persons in the household who were in the least
struck by the possible truthfulness of her
reminiscences were Nurse Bradshaw and her
daughter Olivia. Nurse allowed that very
strange things did sometimes happen, and
perhaps this might be one of them. Mrs.
Chetwynde seemed satisfied by her hesitating
partisanship; and, becoming less excited,
retired to consult with her faithful servant as
to what steps would be most likely to lead to
a solution of the mystery.