s of embarrassment at the quiet
friendliness of Lettice's manners. She was not a person of aristocratic
appearance, for she was short and very stout, and florid into the
bargain; but her broad face was both shrewd and kindly, and her grey
eyes were observant and good-humored. Her grey hair was arranged in
three flat curls, fastened with small black combs on each side of her
face, which was rosy and wrinkled like a russet apple, and her full
purple skirt, her big bonnet, adorned with bows of scarlet ribbon, and
her much be-furbelowed and be-spangled dolman, attested the fact that
she had donned her best clothes for the occasion of her visit, and that
Thorley fashions differed from those of the metropolis. She wore gloves
with one button, moreover, and boots with elastic sides.

Mrs. Bundlecombe seemed to have some difficulty in coming to the point.
She told Lettice much Angleford news, including a piece of information
that interested her a good deal: namely, that the old squire, after many
years of suffering, was dead, and that his nephew, Mr. Brooke Dalton,
had at last succeeded to the property. "He's not there very much,
however: he leaves the house pretty much to his sister, Miss Edith
Dalton; but it's to be hoped that he'll marry soon and bring a lady to
the place."

Lettice wondered again why Mrs. Bundlecombe had called upon her. There
seemed very little point in her remarks. But the good woman had a very
sufficient reason for her call. She was a practical-minded person, and
she was moreover a literary woman in her way, as behoved the widow of a
bookseller who had herself taken to selling books. It is true that her
acquaintance with the works of British authors did not extend far beyond
their titles, but it was to her credit that she contrived to make so
much as she did out of her materials. She might have known as many
insides of books as she knew outsides, and have put them to less
practical service.

"Well," she said, after a quarter of an hour's incessant talk, "you will
be wondering what brought me here, and to be sure, miss, I hardly like
to say it now I've come; but, as I argued with myself, the rights of man
are the rights of man, and to do your best by them who depend on you is
the whole duty of man, which applies, I take it, to woman also. And when
my poor dear husband died, I thought the path of duty was marked out for
me, and I went through my daily exercises, so to speak, just as he had
done for fort