aying that he
should not lose his situation or his friends. But Catherick had too
much pride and spirit, as some people said--too much feeling, as I
think, sir--to face his neighbours again, and try to live down the
memory of his disgrace. My husband heard from him when he had left
England, and heard a second time, when he was settled and doing well in
America. He is alive there now, as far as I know, but none of us in
the old country--his wicked wife least of all--are ever likely to set
eyes on him again."

"What became of Sir Percival?" I inquired. "Did he stay in the
neighbourhood?"

"Not he, sir. The place was too hot to hold him. He was heard at high
words with Mrs. Catherick the same night when the scandal broke out,
and the next morning he took himself off."

"And Mrs. Catherick? Surely she never remained in the village among the
people who knew of her disgrace?"

"She did, sir. She was hard enough and heartless enough to set the
opinions of all her neighbours at flat defiance. She declared to
everybody, from the clergyman downwards, that she was the victim of a
dreadful mistake, and that all the scandal-mongers in the place should
not drive her out of it, as if she was a guilty woman. All through my
time she lived at Old Welmingham, and after my time, when the new town
was building, and the respectable neighbours began moving to it, she
moved too, as if she was determined to live among them and scandalise
them to the very last. There she is now, and there she will stop, in
defiance of the best of them, to her dying day."

"But how has she lived through all these years?" I asked. "Was her
husband able and willing to help her?"

"Both able and willing, sir," said Mrs. Clements. "In the second
letter he wrote to my good man, he said she had borne his name, and
lived in his home, and, wicked as she was, she must not starve like a
beggar in the street. He could afford to make her some small
allowance, and she might draw for it quarterly at a place in London."

"Did she accept the allowance?"

"Not a farthing of it, sir. She said she would never be beholden to
Catherick for bit or drop, if she lived to be a hundred. And she has
kept her word ever since. When my poor dear husband died, and left all
to me, Catherick's letter was put in my possession with the other
things, and I told her to let me know if she was ever in want. 'I'll
let all England know I'm in want,' she said, 'before I tell Cat