as that of Plainton. All these
friends found her the same warm-hearted, cordial woman that she had
ever been. In fact, if there was any change at all in her, she was more
cordial than they had yet known her. As in the case of Willy Croup, a
cloud had risen before her. She had been beset by the sudden fear that
her money already threatened to come between her and her old friends.
"Not if I can help it!" said Mrs. Cliff to herself, as fervently as if
she had been vowing a vow to seek the Holy Grail; and she did help it.
The good people forgot what they had expected to think about her, and
only remembered what they had always thought of her. No matter what had
happened, she was the same.

But what had happened, and how it had happened, and all about it, up and
down, to the right and the left, above and below, everybody wanted to
know, and Mrs. Cliff, with sparkling eyes, was only too glad to tell
them. She had been obliged to be so reserved when she had come home
before, that she was all the more eager to be communicative now; and it
was past midnight before the first of that eager and delighted company
thought of going home.

There was one question, however, which Mrs. Cliff successfully evaded,
and that was--the amount of her wealth. She would not give even an
approximate idea of the value of her share of the golden treasure. It
was very soon plain to everybody that Mrs. Cliff was the same woman she
used to be in regard to keeping to herself that which she did not wish
to tell to others, and so everybody went away with imagination
absolutely unfettered.

CHAPTER III

MISS NANCY SHOTT

The next morning Mrs. Cliff sat alone in her parlor with her mind
earnestly fixed upon her own circumstances. Out in the kitchen, Willy
Croup was dashing about like a domestic fanatic, eager to get the
morning's work done and everything put in order, that she might go
upstairs with Mrs. Cliff, and witness the opening of those wonderful
trunks.

She was a happy woman, for she had a new dish-pan, which Mrs. Cliff had
authorized her to buy that very morning, the holes in the bottom of the
old one having been mended so often that she and Mrs. Cliff both
believed that it would be very well to get a new one and rid themselves
of further trouble.

Willy also had had the proud satisfaction of stopping at the carpenter
shop on her way to buy the dish-pan, and order him to come and do
whatever was necessary to the back-kitchen door.