decreased, and I could see that he, quite as much as mother, approved of Isabel’s companionship for me. It was tacitly agreed by the elders of both parties that the friendship was to be encouraged, and that when we were again settled at home I should be allowed to pay a visit to the Wynyards.

And whenever we spoke of this visit-to-be, the subject of the Grim House was sure to be reverted to.

“I am looking forward tremendously to staying with you,” I said one day to Isabel; “but do you know, even if I were not sure that I should enjoy it in other ways, I should be dreadfully disappointed not to go to Millflowers. I am so exceedingly interested about that queer family, I keep thinking and thinking about them and wondering what their secret can be.”

Isabel looked a very little troubled.

“I hope I didn’t do wrong in telling it you,” she said. “I mean I hope it hasn’t taken too great a hold on your imagination. Papa has always warned us so much not to think more than we can help about it. He cannot bear any sort of gossip, and he has very strong feelings about respecting these poor people’s wish for secrecy and silence. And we have got accustomed to the mystery to a great extent.”

“But there are some things,” I persisted, “that you can’t help knowing about them, without any prying into their affairs. Do they never get any letters, and is ‘Grey’ their real name, do you think?”

It was scarcely fair of me, perhaps, to put these questions to my friend, for, after all, her natural curiosity about her strange neighbours was only dormant. I saw that she hesitated to reply, so I hastened to add assurances of my discretion.

“You need not be afraid of my ever gossipping about the Grim House,” I said. “I have not even mentioned it at home. But one can’t help wondering about it. Do tell me all you know yourself.”

“I think I have told you all there is to tell,” said Isabel. “Nobody knows if ‘Grey’ is their real name or not; and as for their getting letters, I believe they never do—at any rate, not that we have ever heard of. They are good people, of that I am sure. The sisters’ faces are so gentle, though dreadfully sad. The eldest brother is stern-looking, but the younger one looks kind, though very grave. And they are very charitable; the people in the village say they are sure of help from the Grim House whenever they are in trouble. The Greys make their servants tell them of any illness or special poverty; and they are sensible too, the vicar says, in what they do.”

“And have none of their servants ever told over anything?”

“There seems nothing to tell,” said Isabel. “It is just a very quiet regular house. Things seem to go on from year’s end to year’s end just the same.”

“It is too extraordinary,” I exclaimed, “and dreadfully sad.”

“And it will grow sadder and sadder as time passes,” Isabel replied. “They can’t all live for ever, and when it comes to the last one left there alone! It makes one shiver to think of it.”

“But perhaps,” I said, “the secret doesn’t really concern them all? Perhaps if the eldest brother died the others would be free? They may in some way be sacrificed for him?”

But Isabel shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “The only strong feeling I have about it is that they are all suffering together through some one else’s fault. They are so devoted to each other—there is never a breath of any discussion or quarrelling, and that would have been heard of through the servants.”

This was the last talk we had on the subject before the time came for our new friends to turn homewards. We parted with great regrets on both sides, and many a wish on ours—on mine, at least—that we, like them, were bound for England on leaving Weissbad; but that was not our case. Father was more determined than ever that the winter must be spent in the South, though we had begun to hope that the great improvement in our invalids already achieved would have brought about his consent to our all going home again. We quitted Weissbad a few days after the Wynyards, escorted by father, who left us again as soon as he had seen us installed for the second time—this time at one of the smaller, and in those days less-frequented, winter places on the Riviera.

The four or five months we spent there passed uneventfully—much as former winters had done in the years when sojourning in the South was a regular institution for us. Nothing so interesting as our meeting with the Wynyards at Weissbad happened to us; and indeed, but for one incident, trivial and scarcely noticed at the time, but which after-occurrences recalled to my memory, I should have no occasion to linger on our stay in the South.

The incident was the following.

The hotel at which we were staying was a small one, though comfortably managed on almost entirely English rules, for the visitors, many of whom came there year after year, were rarely of any other nationality than our own. It was therefore impossible, and would have savoured of churlishness and affectation, to keep ourselves apart, or to be on other terms than those of friendly acquaintanceship with our fellow-guests. None of them, however, were very interesting. On the whole, those whom we “took to” the most were a mother and two sons—quite young fellows, one about Moore’s age, the other a year or two older. It was for the sake of the elder one that they were spending the winter abroad, as a very severe illness had left him much in the state that we had dreaded for Moore himself, and the similarity of the circumstances naturally induced sympathy between us.

It was Moore, of course, who first made friends, beginning with the younger boy, and Mrs Payne, the mother, speedily followed it up by thanking us for some little kindness we happened to show her son.

“It is so dull for him here,” she said, “as his brother is not able to do much. I almost wish we had left him at home at school. But it would have been dreary for him at Christmas—his father and my eldest son are such terribly busy people. Lawyers generally are, I suppose—and we hoped that Leo would have some chance of improving his French here, as he is going to a public school at Easter.”

Mother confided to her in return Moore’s prospects. Mrs Payne was a gentle, rather childish woman, of the type whom very clever men are often credited with preferring as wives, and we soon came to the conclusion that the old saying was exemplified in the present case. The sons, the elder one in particular, were decidedly intelligent above the average, and their admiration for their father and elder brother fully equalled that of their mother. Rupert, the invalid, took a great fancy to me, and before long I was the recipient of many of his secret hopes and aspirations, the most intense of which was that he should become a novelist.

“You see, Miss Fitzmaurice,” he said to me one day, “I have already, and would have increasingly, material ready to my hand. You don’t know what extraordinary stories lawyers come across! Many of them there is no breach of confidence in repeating, and my brother Clarence has told me bits of others quite as strange as any fiction.”

“Or stranger,” I remarked, for at that moment Isabel’s description of the Grim House and its inhabitants came into my mind.

“Yes,” said Rupert, “you are right. Some stories are ‘too strange not to be true.’ And you see I could piece