She turned her eyes to Celia, and Celia's heart was made to ache by the look of dumb suffering in them, that look which the weak always wear when the world is going wrong with them.
Celia knelt down beside the chair, and took one of the nerveless hands.
"Are you better, getting stronger, Lady Heyton ?" she asked, gently.
Miriam shook her head listlessly, and gazed out of the window; then she turned her eyes again slowly to Celia, and said, in a toneless voice, "Is it true, what the servants are saying, that the Marquess's elder brother has been discovered, and that the Marquess, our Marquess, is no longer the master here?
Marie came and told me something about it; but she was confused and rambled, and I could make very little of it." "It is true," said Celia.

"The elder brother is alive, is here in the house.

He had been living in seclusion for years; the Marquess discovered a little while ago that his brother was alive; but the real Marquess did not wish to displace his younger brother.

He was living in poverty, working for his living.

I knew him at that time." Miriam looked only slightly interested.