thes were nice. Jenny thought
that she would get a new best dress soon, now that peace was come; and a
new hat with a high silk crown to match the dress. Dempsey had admired a
hat like that on a girl in the village. He had said it was "real smart."
And to be "smart" Jenny thought was to be happy.

After supper, Janet and the girls washed up and put all tidy for the
night. Rachel worked at accounts in the sitting-room. She had sold the
last hay she had to spare wonderfully well, and potatoes showed a good
profit. Threshing charges were very high, and wages--appalling! But on
the whole, they were doing very well. Janet's Jersey cow had been
expensive, but they could afford her.

They had never yet drawn out so good an interim balance sheet without
delight, and rosy dreams for the future. Now her mood was leaden, and she
pushed the papers aside impatiently. As she was sitting with her hands
round her knees, staring into the fire, or at the chair where
Ellesborough had sat while she told her story, Janet came into the room.
She paused at the door, and Rachel did not see her look of sudden alarm
as she perceived Rachel's attitude of depression. Then she came up to the
fire. The two girls could be heard laughing overhead.

"So my cow's a good one?" she said, with her pleasant voice and smile.

"A beauty," said Rachel, looking up, and recapitulating the points and
yield of the Jersey.

Janet gave a shrug--implying a proper scepticism.

"It doesn't seem to be quite as easy to tell lies about cows as about
horses," she said, laughing; "that's about all one can say. We'll hope
for the best." Then--after a moment,--

"I never told you much about that man Dempsey's visit. Of course he came
to see you. He thought when he saw you at Millsborough that you were a
Mrs. Delane he had seen in Canada. Were you perhaps a relation of hers? I
said I would ask you. Then I inquired how often he had seen Mrs. Delane.
He said twice--perhaps three times--at her home--at a railway
station--and at a farm belonging to a man called Tanner."

"Yes," said Rachel, indifferently. "I knew Lucy Tanner, his sister. She
was an artist like him. I liked them both."

There was silence. In Rachel's breast there was beating a painful tide of
speech that longed to find its way to freedom--but it was gripped and
thrust back by her will. There was something in Janet as in Ellesborough
that wooed her heart, that seemed to promise help.

But nothing more pas