ite? You could
tell nothing by that."

"She warn't here after she had gone away," said Miss Collins; "and that
was jes' the time when I knowed all about it. I knowed about other
people too."

That was also the time after Evan had quitted Pleasant Valley. Yet
Diana did not know why she could not keep herself from trembling. If
Evan _had_ written, then, this Jemima Collins and her employer, Miss
Gunn, would have known it and drawn their conclusions. Well, they had
no data to go upon now.

"Bring me a little saucepan, Jemima, will you?"

Jemima brought it. Now her mistress (but she never called her so) would
be away and off in a minute or two more, and leave her to watch the
saucepan, she knew, and her opportunity would be over. Still she waited
to choose her words.

"You ain't so fond o' life as I be," she observed.

"Perhaps not," said Diana. "I do not think I should like a situation in
the post office."

"But I should ha' thought you'd ha' liked to go all over the world and
see everything. Now Pleasant Valley seems to me something like a
corner. Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I what?" said Diana, standing up. She had been stooping
down over her saucepan, which now sat upon a little bed of coals.

"La! you needn't look at me like that," said Miss Collins, chuckling.
"It's no harm. You had your ch'ice, and you chose it; only _I_ would
have took the other."

"The other what? _What_ would you have taken?"

"Wall, I don' know," said Miss Collins; "to be sure, one never doos
know till one is tried, they say; but if I had, I think I should ha'
took 'tother one."

"I do not understand you," said Diana, walking off to the table, where
she began to gather up the wrecks of the parsley stems. She felt an odd
sensation of cold about the region of her heart, physically very
disagreeable.

"You are hard to make understand, then," said Miss Collins. "I suppose
you know you had two sweethearts, don't you? And sure enough you had
the pick of the lot. 'Tain't likely you've forgotten."

"How dare you speak so?" asked Diana, not passionately, but with a sort
of cold despair, eying her handmaiden.

"Dare?" said the latter. "Dare what? I ain't saying nothin'. 'Tain't no
harm to have two beaux; you chose your ch'ice, and _he_ hain't no cause
to be uncontented, anyhow. About the 'tother one I don't say nothin'. I
should think he _was_, but that's nat'ral. I s'pose he's got over it by
now. You needn't stand and look. He's fur