This was the second shock.

What did it all mean?
Where was my mother?
My father did not reply.

When I reached home I found that all the servants I had known in my childhood days were gone.

From the new ones I knew that I should learn nothing of the mystery which, like a pall, had suddenly settled down upon me." She paused, her arms hanging listless at her sides, her gaze riveted upon a pattern in the rug at her feet.

Warrington sat like a man of stone; her voice had cast a spell upon him.
"I do not know why I tell you these things.