CHAPTER II.
WHEN the two months had passed we returned to Darrock Hall. Nobody there had received any news in our absence of the whereabouts of my master and his yacht.
Six more weary weeks elapsed, and in that time but one event happened at the Hall to vary the dismal monotony of the lives we now led in the solitary place. One morning Josephine came down after dressing my mistress with her face downright livid to look at, except on one check, where there was a mark as red as burning fire. I was in the kitchen at the time, and I asked what was the matter.
“The matter!” says she, in her shrill voice and her half-foreign English. “Use your own eyes, if you please, and look at this cheek of mine. What! have you lived so long a time with your mistress, and don’t you know the mark of her han
