they do much more
than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many
ways.

'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey,
not quite pleased.

'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie,
'for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that
makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving
all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk
of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same.
They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.'

'My dear,' said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, 'I wish you
would talk to her.'

'My dear,' said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, 'I
think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly
favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she
will soon find one.'

While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary
observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the
first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was natural
that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a careful
scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie's
father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an
influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest, though it had
no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both
had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam,
and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing
them together.

For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean
village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly
couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella
had been up to see her room and had come down, the mill bell rang.
This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and Bella
standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged
in pursuing the village children, and her investigations whether they
were in danger of becoming children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank
being engaged--to say the truth--in evading that branch of his spiritual
functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.

Bella at length said:

'Hadn't we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr
Rokesmith?'

'By all mea