t's
out of our power to help them. She must have some relations somewhere, I
should think. I wonder what her antecedents really are, any way. I could
never quite make the girl out yet."

"Then I am a little shrewder than the rest of you, that's all," spoke up
the voice of Mrs. Caroline Newcomer. "I found her out some time ago.
Listen, ladies, all of you who have any curiosity upon the subject. I
learned her whole history through one of my servants, who had lived in
the same city from whence this mysterious personage came. By a curious
coincidence, these Graystones, mother and daughter, came and took
lodgings beneath the same lowly roof to which the poverty of this Mrs.
Baily had driven her for shelter.

"Of their former life, my informant knew little, but when she first
became acquainted with them, they were miserably poor, and in debt to
their landlady. At length Miss Clemence Graystone succeeded, by the
rarest good fortune, in obtaining a position as governess in a wealthy
family. She was, however, afterwards dismissed, (as Mrs. Baily
afterwards learned, through one of the employees,) in disgrace, for
having designs upon a young gentleman of fortune--the uncle, I believe,
of her pupils.

"How they managed to live on through the winter was a wonder to the
whole household, or pay the expenses of the widow Graystone's sickness
and death, which occurred in the spring. The landlady seemed to think
everything of them, and refused to satisfy anybody's curiosity in regard
to the matter. The girl Clemence went away with a strange woman, as soon
as she recovered from an illness that followed her mother's death; and
that was the last known of her until she turns up here, to make capital
out of her pale face and mourning garments, which, I dare say, she
thinks look interesting.

"So that is the whole story about this young woman, who is probably at
this moment laughing quietly in her sleeve, at the clever way she has
imposed upon the inhabitants of this benighted village. I took pains,
since her dismissal by the School Committee, to write and find out these
particulars; and while I was about it, I thought I would also make an
effort to discover something of the former life of the woman who calls
herself Ulrica Hardyng. I always had my suspicions of her, which you
will see have been duly verified;"--and she proceeded to relate, with
great animation, to the gaping crowd around her, a garbled account of
the misfortunes of the d