ed of poor
Rachel Frost--cold, and white, and DEAD!

CHAPTER III.

THE NEWS BROUGHT HOME.

Seated in the dining-room at Verner's Pride, comfortably asleep in an
arm-chair, her face turned to the fire and her feet on a footstool, was
Mrs. Verner. The dessert remained on the table, but nobody was there to
partake of it. Mr. Verner had retired to his study upon the withdrawal
of the cloth, according to his usual custom. Always a man of spare
habits, shunning the pleasures of the table, he had scarcely taken
sufficient to support nature since his health failed. Mrs. Verner would
remonstrate; but his medical attendant, Dr. West, said it was better for
him that it should be so. Lionel Verner (who had come in for the tail of
the dinner) and John Massingbird had likewise left the room and the
house, but not together. Mrs. Verner sat on alone. She liked to take her
share of dessert, if the others did not, and she generally remained in
the dining-room for the evening, rarely caring to move. Truth to say,
Mrs. Verner was rather addicted to dropping asleep with her last glass
of wine and waking up with the tea-tray, and she did so this evening.

Of course work goes on downstairs (or is supposed to go on) whether the
mistress of a house be asleep or awake. It really was going on that
evening in the laundry at Verner's Pride, whatever it may have been
doing in the other various branches and departments. The laundry-maids
had had heavy labour on their hands that day, and they were hard at work
still, while Mrs. Verner slept.

"Here's Mother Duff's Dan a-coming in!" exclaimed one of the women,
glancing over her ironing-board to the yard. "What do he want, I
wonder?"

"Who?" cried Nancy, the under-housemaid, a tart sort of girl, whose
business it was to assist in the laundry on busy days.

"Dan Duff. Just see what he wants, Nancy. He's got a parcel."

The gentleman familiarly called Dan Duff was an urchin of ten years old.
He was the son of Mrs. Duff, linen-draper-in-ordinary to Deerham--a lady
popularly spoken of as "Mother Duff," both behind her back and before
her face. Nancy darted out at the laundry-door and waylaid the intruder
in the yard.

"Now, Dan Duff!" cried she, "what do you want?"

"Please, here's this," was Dan Duff's reply, handing over the parcel.
"And, please, I want to see Rachel Frost."

"Who's it for? What's inside it?" sharply asked Nancy, regarding the
parcel on all sides.

"It's things as