heard by
Midwinter, they were further away from the house--Allan was probably
accompanying young Pedgift a few steps on his way back.

After a while, Allan's voice was audible once more under the portico,
making inquiries after his friend; answered by the servant's voice
giving Midwinter's message. This brief interruption over, the silence
was not broken again till the time came for shutting up the house. The
servants' footsteps passing to and fro, the clang of closing doors,
the barking of a disturbed dog in the stable-yard--these sounds warned
Midwinter it was getting late. He rose mechanically to kindle a light.
But his head was giddy, his hand trembled; he laid aside the match-box,
and returned to his chair. The conversation between Allan and young
Pedgift had ceased to occupy his attention the instant he ceased to
hear it; and now again, the sense that the precious time was failing him
became a lost sense as soon as the house noises which had awakened it
had passed away. His energies of body and mind were both alike worn out;
he waited with a stolid resignation for the trouble that was to come to
him with the coming day.

An interval passed, and the silence was once more disturbed by voices
outside; the voices of a man and a woman this time. The first few
words exchanged between them indicated plainly enough a meeting of the
clandestine kind; and revealed the man as one of the servants at Thorpe
Ambrose, and the woman as one of the servants at the cottage.

Here again, after the first greetings were over, the subject of the new
governess became the all-absorbing subject of conversation.

The major's servant was brimful of forebodings (inspired solely by
Miss Gwilt's good looks) which she poured out irrepressibly on her
"sweetheart," try as he might to divert her to other topics. Sooner or
later, let him mark her words, there would be an awful "upset" at the
cottage. Her master, it might be mentioned in confidence, led a dreadful
life with her mistress. The major was the best of men; he hadn't a
thought in his heart beyond his daughter and his everlasting clock. But
only let a nice-looking woman come near the place, and Mrs. Milroy
was jealous of her--raging jealous, like a woman possessed, on
that miserable sick-bed of hers. If Miss Gwilt (who was certainly
good-looking, in spite of her hideous hair) didn't blow the fire into a
flame before many days more were over their heads, the mistress was the
mistress no