Mrs. Mansfield still lived at Wyechester, and in the same house as she had spent the early days of her widowhood. With the disappearance and disgrace of her daughter, she had closed her heart against the world. She had provided, in a mechanical way, for her grandson, and she kept herself informed of his whereabouts and his doings. Otherwise she lived a blind narrow life of rigid devotion and unscrupulous severity.

From the day the baby-boy and the packet arrived from Brussels, she had never broken the seal of that packet. For thirty-five years it had lain where she had that day placed it in her desk. The brown paper in which it had been wrapped was now rotten, and might be shaken asunder.

Why should she open it? Her daughter had run away with a man, and had not, in her first letter, said she was married. What was the good of looking through those papers? If it contained any statements in favour of that wretched girl, these statements were, beyond all doubt, lies. Nothing in the world would clear her daughter's name or mitigate the disgrace of her conduct.

Mrs. Mansfield took in The Wyechester Independent. She did not read the general news as a rule. But the Independent as became the only daily paper in a town whose sole claim upon distinction was that it had a cathedral and a bishop, devoted much of its space to local and general religious topics. The religious news and comments she always read.

That morning after the storm, The Wyechester Independent had a long account of the storm and of the wreck of the Seabird, the death of the Duke of Shropshire, and of the heroic conduct of "Mr. Charles Augustus Cheyne, a gentleman who had recently won his spurs in the field of literature, and whose latest achievement fills all England this day with wonder and admiration, and of whom the people of Wyechester are naturally proud, as he owes his parentage on one side to this city."

What, Wyechester proud of her grandson, of the child of her unhappy daughter! Wyechester, the pious cathedral-town of Wyechester, proud of him she had looked upon as a disgrace! It was unkind, ungenerous, unmanly of the author of that article to hint thus even distantly at the disgraceful past. It was not necessary or decent for the writer of that article to unearth a long-buried scandal. It was an outrage on the living and the dead. The man who wrote it was a low creature, and ought to be scouted from all decent society; that is, indeed, if ever he had been in decent society. How had this man found out? It must have been the attorney who gave the information.

While the old woman was giving full scope to her anger, there was a knock at the door. A gentleman desired to see Mrs. Mansfield; he gave the name of Fritson. The servant might show him in.

A stout little man entered the room, and bowed to Mrs. Mansfield, and said briskly:

"Mrs. Mansfield, I believe?"

"Yes, sir, I am Mrs. Mansfield," she said, with great coldness and repelling precision.

He took no notice of her manner.

"My name is Fritson, madam."

"And to what, Mr.--er--eh--Fritson, do I owe the honour of this visit? I have no recollection of having seen you before, sir," she said frigidly.

"You are right, my dear madam."

The old woman drew herself back at the unwarrantable freedom of this man calling her "my dear madam."

The visitor took no notice--in fact, did not observe her manner. He went on:

"We have never met before; and you owe my visit to the flattering fact that you have a grandson, whose name is now a household word in all England."

"Sir!" she said, rising angrily.

He did not see her anger.

"I have come, my dear madam, to know if you will be good enough to furnish me with additional particulars about your grandson, about his youth, and so on--in short a brief biography. I represent The Wyechester Independent and one of the most influential metropolitan dailies. Any facts you will be good enough to give me will not, you may be certain, suffer in my hands. I will do the best I can to make them light and readable. Any anecdote of your grandson's prowess as, say, a boxer or a cricketer, while a boy, would be peculiarly acceptable, particularly if there was a touch of magnanimity about it. One of the fruits of my long experience is that nothing appeals so universally to the British public as magnanimous muscle."

The old woman stood pale and without the power of speech while he made this long harangue. When he paused she raised her arm, and, pointing with a long thin yellow finger at the door, said huskily:

"Go, sir; go at once!" She could say no more.

He bounded to his feet in amazement. He had no intention to hurt or offend. Nothing was farther from his thoughts. He had been simply heedless, full of his own mind, unobservant.

"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said, in a tone of sincere apology. "I had no intention of causing you any annoyance. I thought you might like to make the Independent and the Metropolitan Vindicator the medium----"

"Go, sir, go! You are committing an outrage. Go!"

"Believe me, madam," he began, backing towards the door.

"I do not want to hear any more. Go, sir!"

"But, my dear madam, you must allow me to explain----"

"If you do not leave at once I shall send my servant for the police!"

The reporter had reached the door by this time, and as Mrs. Mansfield ceased speaking, he bowed and retired, comforting himself with the assurance that she was mad.

When she was alone she sank down and covered her face with her hands, too much exhausted to think.

For upwards of an hour she did not move; then she took away her hands from before her face, arose, and, with resolute step, crossed the room to where her desk stood on a small table in the pier. With resolute hands she opened the desk, and took out that old bundle which had been sent to her by her dying child by the same messenger that had brought the boy four-and-thirty years ago.

Yes, she would destroy this hateful relic of disgrace and dishonour. She would burn it down to the last atom. Nothing of it, nothing of that perfidious daughter, should survive.

She sat down and broke the seals, and cut the moulding cord, and released what was inside. This proved to be a large leather pocket-book.

The first thing that met her eye was the copy of a certificate of marriage between Charles Augustus Cheyne and Harriet Mansfield at Anerly Church. She searched in the pocket-book and found a small sealed packet, bearing, in a man's writing, these words: "Not to be opened for three years." The date was the same as that on the copy of the marriage-certificate.

With trembling hands the old woman cut the silk and broke the seal. She found nothing but a letter on an old-fashioned sheet of letter-paper, which, on its right-hand corner, bore a coronet surrounded by strawberry leaves.

END OF PART I.