y don't.'

Adela kept her eyes on the pages before her, but she was listening
intently. A sort of verisimilitude in the picture drawn by her
Radical-minded brother could not escape her; her thought was troubled.
When she spoke it was without resentment, but gravely.

'I don't like this spirit in judging of people. You know quite well,
Alfred, how easy it is to see the whole story in quite another way. You
begin by a harsh and worldly judgment, and it leads you to misrepresent
all that follows. I refuse to believe that Godfrey Eldon married Mrs.
Mutimer's daughter for her money.'

Alfred laughed aloud.

'Of course you do, sister Adela! Women won't admit such things; that's
_their_ aristocratic feeling!'

'And that is, too, worthless and a sham? Will that, too, be done away
with in the new age?'

'Oh, depend upon it! When women are educated, they will take the world
as it is, and decline to live on illusions.'

'Then how glad I am to have been left without education!'

In the meantime a conversation of a very lively kind was in progress
between Mrs. Waltham and her visitor, Mrs. Mewling. The latter was a
lady whose position much resembled Mrs. Waltham's: she inhabited a small
house in the village street, and spent most of her time in going about
to hear or to tell some new thing. She came in this evening with a look
presageful of news indeed.

'I've been to Belwick to-day,' she began, sitting very close to Mrs.
Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency.
'I've seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you think she has told me?'

Mrs. Yottle was the wife of a legal gentleman who had been in Mr.
Mutimer's confidence. Mrs. Waltham at once divined intelligence
affecting the Eldons.

'What?' she asked eagerly.

'You'd never dream such a thing! what _will_ come to pass! An
unthought-of possibility!' She went on _crescendo_. 'My dear Mrs.
Waltham, Mr. Mutimer has left no will!'

It was as if an electric shock had passed from the tips of her fingers
into her hearer's frame. Mrs. Waltham paled.

'That cannot be true!' she whispered, incapable of utterance above
breath.

'Oh, but there's not a doubt of it!' Knowing that the news would be
particularly unpalatable to Mrs. Waltham, she proceeded to dwell upon it
with dancing eyes. 'Search has been going on since the day of the death:
not a corner that hasn't been rummaged, not a drawer that hasn't been
turned out, not a book in the library tha