ely explained.

"Had its mother no relatives?"

"Well, she had an aunt down at Southampton, I've heard tell, but she
didn't take much notice of her, not _she_ didn't. Her mother only died
last year, took off sudden before her daughter could get to her."

"Your schoolmistress has known trouble," observed Mrs. Temperley. "Had
she no one, no sister, no friend, during all this time that she could
turn to for help or counsel?"

"Not as I knows of," Dodge replied.

There was a long pause, during which the stillness seemed to weigh upon
the air, as if the pressure of Fate were hanging there with ruthless
immobility.

"She ain't got no more to suffer now," Dodge remarked, nodding with an
aspect of half apology towards the grave. "They sleeps soft as sleeps
here."

"Good heavens, I hope so!" Mrs. Temperley exclaimed.

The grave had made considerable progress before she descended from the
stile and prepared to take her homeward way. On leaving, she made Dodge
come with her to the gate, and point out the red-roofed cottage covered
with monthly roses and flaming creeper, where the schoolmistress had
passed so many years, and where she now lay with her work and her days
all over, in the tiny upper room, at whose latticed window the sun used
to wake her on summer mornings, or the winter rain pattered dreary
prophecies of the tears that she would one day shed.

CHAPTER XVII.

"If you please, ma'am, the cook says as the meat hasn't come for lunch,
and what is she to do?"

"Without," replied Mrs. Temperley automatically.

The maid waited for more discreet directions. She had given a month's
notice that very morning, because she found Craddock Dene too dull.

"Thank goodness, that barbarian is going!" Hubert had exclaimed.

"We shall but exchange a Goth for a Vandal," his wife replied.

Mrs. Temperley gazed intently at her maid, the light of intelligence
gradually dawning in her countenance. "Is there anything else in the
house, Sapph--Sophia?"

"No, ma'am," replied Sophia.

"Oh, tell the cook to make it into a fricassee, and be sure it is well
flavoured." The maid hesitated, but seeing from the wandering expression
of her employer's eye that her intellect was again clouded over, she
retired to give the message to the cook--with comments.

The library at the Red House was the only room that had been radically
altered since the days of the former tenants, whose taste had leant
towards the florid rather than