It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on it; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael in his cell.

Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained as one stunned.

Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at first that she was stunned by grief.
"Then Andrea knew all the time." That was the constant refrain of her bewildered, half-paralysed mind.
Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question made itself felt.

"_How did he know ?_" That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered over it.

It remained a mystery to her all of her life.