CHAPTER V.
Christmas had come and gone at Farley, without event of importance to the outward eye. William Shaw was feeble; it was easy to predicate, as his neighbours did, that he would not survive another attack such as he had had in the autumn. Mrs. Shaw certainly was more subdued—did not hunt this winter, and had not appeared at the great county ball. This was noticed with approval, and attributed partly to her husband's failing health, partly to the grief and disappointment consequent upon her niece's behaviour. People compared notes, and found they had all thought her a very odd girl. No one had ever quite succeeded in "making her out;" but it had never been suspected that she would prove so ungrateful to her devoted uncle and aunt. For, of course, the fiction of her staying with friends could not be kept up all these months against the persistent industry to discover where that was. It came at last to being "not quite sure exactly where she is—she so seldom writes." And then, of course, there could no longer be a doubt; she had absconded, and Heaven only knew where she had gone. Certainly Mr. and Mrs. Shaw did not.
The handsome hero of this inexplicable scandal naturally
