h you
before tea. I will then return to Alston on the following morning."
There was at any rate good courage in this on the part of Mr.
Furnival;--great courage; but with it coldness of heart, dishonesty
of purpose, and black ingratitude. Had she not given everything to
him?

Mrs. Furnival when she got the letter was not alone. "There,"
said she; throwing it over to a lady who sat on the other side of
the fireplace handling a loose sprawling mass of not very clean
crochet-work. "I knew he would stay away on Christmas-day. I told you
so."

"I didn't think it possible," said Miss Biggs, rolling up the big
ball of soiled cotton, that she might read Mr. Furnival's letter at
her leisure. "I didn't really think it possible--on Christmas-day!
Surely, Mrs. Furnival, he can't mean Christmas-day? Dear, dear, dear!
and then to throw it in your face in that way that you said you
didn't care about it."

"Of course I said so," answered Mrs. Furnival. "I was not going to
ask him to come home as a favour."

"Not to make a favour of it, of course not." This was Miss Biggs
from ----. I am afraid if I tell the truth I must say that she came
from Red Lion Square! And yet nothing could be more respectable than
Miss Biggs. Her father had been a partner with an uncle of Mrs.
Furnival's; and when Kitty Blacker had given herself and her young
prettinesses to the hardworking lawyer, Martha Biggs had stood at the
altar with her, then just seventeen years of age, and had promised
to her all manner of success for her coming life. Martha Biggs had
never, not even then, been pretty; but she had been very faithful.
She had not been a favourite with Mr. Furnival, having neither wit
nor grace to recommend her, and therefore in the old happy days of
Keppel Street she had been kept in the background; but now, in this
present time of her adversity, Mrs. Furnival found the benefit of
having a trusty friend.

"If he likes better to be with these people down at Alston, I am sure
it is the same to me," said the injured wife.

"But there's nobody special at Alston, is there?" asked Miss Biggs,
whose soul sighed for a tale more piquant than one of mere general
neglect. She knew that her friend had dreadful suspicions, but Mrs.
Furnival had never as yet committed herself by uttering the name of
any woman as her rival. Miss Biggs thought that a time had now come
in which the strength of their mutual confidence demanded that such
name should be uttered. I