"Yes; but in the mean while I shall be miserable. I wish I knew some nice person whom I might ask to stay with me."
"Why don't you take a companion,—some poor gentlewoman in search of a home? She would read to you, and talk to you."
"No; that would be dreadful. She would be sure to be old and ugly. I should like someone to take Paul's place,—some one young and fresh like him. We're all so terribly old, in the house. You're at least seventy; I'm sixty-five" (Mrs. De Grey was pleased to say); "Deborah is sixty, the cook and coachman are fifty-five apiece."
"You want a young girl then?"
"Yes, some nice, fresh young girl, who would laugh once in a while, and make a little music,—a little sound in the house."
"Well," said Herbert, after reflecting a moment, "you had better suit yourself before Paul comes home. You have only a year."
"Dear me," said Mrs. De Grey; "I shouldn't feel myself obliged to turn her out on Paul's account."
Father Herbert looked at his companion with a penetrating glance. "Nevertheless, my dear lady," he said, "you know what I mean."
"O yes, I know what you mean,—and you. Father Herbert, know what I think."
"Yes, madam, and, allow me to add, that I don't greatly care. Why should I? I hope with all my heart that you'll never find yourself compelled to think otherwise."
"It is certain," said Mrs. De Grey, "that Paul has had time to play out his little tragedy a dozen times over."
"His father," rejoined Herbert, gravely, "was twenty-six years old."
At these words Mrs. De Grey looked at the priest with a slight frown and a flushed cheek. But he took no pains to meet her eyes, and in a few moments she had recovered, in silence, her habitual calmness.
Within a week after this conversation Mrs. De Grey observed at church two persons who appeared to be strangers
