a woman who would deliberately flout her
neighbours by wearing preposterous millinery!" Ernest exclaimed.

Hadria went her round of calls, and all eyes fixed themselves on her
bonnet. Mrs. Allan, who had small opportunity of seeing the fashions,
seemed impressed if slightly puzzled by it. Mrs. Jordan evidently
thought it "loud." Mrs. Walker supposed it fashionable, but regretted
that this sort of thing was going to be worn this season. She hoped the
girls would modify the style in adopting it.

Mrs. Walker had heard that the two Professors had arrived at Craddock
Place yesterday afternoon, and the Engletons expected them to make a
visit of some weeks. Hadria's face brightened.

"And so at last we may hope that the Priory will be inhabited," said the
vicar's wife.

"Of course you know," she added in the pained voice that she always
reserved for anecdotes of local ill-doing, "that Mrs. Fortescue
committed suicide there."

Madame Bertaux, the English wife of a French official, had chanced to
call, and Mrs. Walker gave the details of the story for the benefit of
the new-comer.

Madame Bertaux was a brisk, clever, good-looking woman, with a profound
knowledge of the world and a corresponding contempt for it.

It appeared that the Professor's wife, whom Madame Bertaux had happened
to meet in Paris, was a young, beautiful, and self-willed girl,
passionately devoted to her husband. She was piqued at his lack of
jealousy, and doubted or pretended to doubt his love for her. In order
to put him to the test, she determined to rouse his jealousy by violent
and systematic flirtation. This led to an entanglement, and finally, in
a fit of reckless anger, to an elopement with a Captain Bolton who was
staying at the Priory at the time. Seized with remorse, she had returned
home to kill herself. This was the tragedy that had kept the old house
for so many years tenantless. Hadria's music was the only sound that had
disturbed its silence, since the day when the dead body of its mistress
was found in the drawing-room, which she was supposed to have entered
unknown to anyone, by the window that gave on to the terrace.

Valeria Du Prel was able to throw more light on the strange story. She
had difficulty in speaking without rancour of the woman who had thrown
away the love of such a man. She admitted that the girl was extremely
fascinating, and had seemed to Valeria to have the faults of an
impetuous rather than of a bad nature. She