the window for a minute.) There's no strange young woman
here, oh, of course not. Poor Bell, honest man, only _fancies_ he
has a visitor in the house."

Here Mrs. Bell turned ghastly pale. Mrs. Butler saw that she had
unexpectedly driven a nail home, and with fiendish glee pursued her
advantage.

"A visitor! oh, yes, _all the lodgings were full,_ packed! and it
was so convenient to take in a visitor a--_friend._ Hunt the baker
has been speaking about it. I didn't listen--I make it a point
_never_ to listen to gossip--but Maria--Maria, you can come here
now. Have the goodness, Maria, to tell Mrs. Bell exactly what Hunt said,
when you went in to buy the brown loaf for me last Friday."

"Oh, sister--I--I really don't remember."

"Don't remember! Piddle dumpling! You remembered well enough when you
came back all agog with the news. I reproved you for listening to idle
gossip, and you read a sermon of Blair's on evil speaking aloud to me
that night. You shall read sermon ten to-night. It's on lying. Well,
Mrs. Bell, _I_ can repeat what my poor sister has forgotten. It was
only to the effect that you and Bell must have had a windfall left you,
and _he_ never knew a visitor treated so well as you treated yours.
The dainty cakes you had to get her, and the fuss over her, and every
blessed thing paid down for with silver of the realm. Well, well,
sometimes it is _convenient_ to have a visitor. But now I must
leave. Maria, we'll be going. You have got to get to your sermon on
lying as soon as possible. Good-bye, Mrs. Bell. Perhaps you'll be able
to tell some one else why the whole town is talking about Miss
Hart--whoever Miss Hart is--and about Beatrice, and the wedding being
put off--and Captain Bertram going off into high hysterics in--(Maria,
you can go back to the window)--in a certain young lady's private room.
Now I'm off. Come, Maria."

CHAPTER XXX.

GUARDIANS ARE NOT ALWAYS TO BE ENVIED.

It would have been difficult to find a more easy-going, kind,
happy-tempered man than Mr. Ingram. He had never married--this was not
because he had not loved. Stories were whispered about him, and these
stories had truth for their foundation--that when he was young he had
been engaged to a girl of high birth, great beauty of person, and rare
nobility of mind. Evelyn St. Just had died in her youth, and Mr. Ingram
for her sake had never brought a wife home to the pleasant old Rectory.
His sorrow had softened, but in no deg