o death within a year of their marriage, and that
she was now going out to the colony, probably,--so the old lady said who
was the informant,--in search of a second husband. She was to some
extent, the old lady said, in charge of a distant relative, who was
then on board, with a respectable husband and children, and who was very
much ashamed of her poor connection. So much John Caldigate had heard.

Though he had heard this he did not feel inclined to tell it all to Dick
Shand. Dick had professed his intention of unravelling the mystery, but
Caldigate almost thought that he would like to unravel it himself. The
woman was so constantly alone! And then, though she was ill-dressed,
untidy, almost unkempt on occasions, still, through it all, there was
something attractive about her. There was a brightness in her eye, and a
courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her
appearance, she would be worth his attention--just for the voyage. When
he had been speaking to herself they had been on the deck together, and
it had been dusk and he had not been able to look her in the face; but
while Shand had been speaking to him he had observed that she was very
comely. And this was the more remarkable because it seemed to him to be
so evident that she made the worst rather than the best of herself. She
was quite a young woman;--probably, he thought, not more than three or
four and twenty; and she was there, with many young men round her, and
yet she made no effort to attract attention. When his eye had fallen
upon her she had generally been quite alone, doing some piece of coarse
and ordinary work.

'I have had another conversation with her,' said Shand to him that
night.

'Have you unravelled the mystery?'

'Not quite; but I have got the fact that there is a mystery. She told me
that you and I and she herself ought not to be here. When I asked her
why, she said that you and I ought to be gentlemen and that she ought to
be a lady. I told her that you and I were gentlemen, in spite of our
trousers. "Ah," she said, "there comes the difference; I'm not a lady
any longer!" When I contradicted her she snubbed me, and said that I
hadn't seen enough of the world to know anything about it. But I'll have
it all out of her before I've done.'

For some days after that Caldigate kept himself aloof from Mrs. Smith,
not at all because he had ceased to notice her or to think about her,
but from a feeling of dislike to ex