interrupted by the
belated appearance of her hostess, who came limping with the aid of a
stick, and with a slow and painful step into the room.

For, as she had said in her letter to Mr. Anstruther, Mrs. Murray was a
martyr to an acute form of rheumatism, and though few people beyond her
old and attached servants knew it, she was seldom long out of pain. And,
partly on account of her rheumatism, and partly because she was so very
deaf, she shunned society, and was rarely to be met with in any one
else's house, although she gladly welcomed any one who, as she put it,
was kind enough to come and see her. But, on the other hand, she visited
a great deal among the poor, not only in her own village, but in the
villages for many miles around Windy Gap, and the sight of her fat,
sturdy, grey ponies drawing up outside the doors of their cottages was
one that never failed to give pleasure to their inmates. She and Lady
Strangways had met over a year ago at the bedside of a poor girl who was
suffering from an incurable malady, and whose parents rented a cottage on
the Wrexley estate. Lady Strangways, who was conscientiously trying, in
the intervals of a very full and busy life, to know all her husband's
tenants, and who, wherever she went, heard Mrs. Murray's praises sounded,
asked at once to be allowed to call on her. Mrs. Murray answered
courteously that it would give her great pleasure to know Lady
Strangways, but pleaded her infirmities as an excuse for paying any
visits herself. In spite of her deafness and her lameness, Mrs. Murray
was the soul of cheerfulness. Though she was cut off from much
intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was never at a loss for
occupation, and had so many resources within herself that she rarely had
a dull moment. For one thing she was an omnivorous reader, and just as
Mrs. Danvers never sat down without a piece of knitting in her hand, so
Mrs. Murray never sat down without a book.

"Needlework," she had said once when a friend had tried to induce her to
ply a needle of some sort, "is all very well for those who can hear. They
can work and listen at the same time, but if I took to knitting, or
crochet, or embroidery, I should be shut up with my own thoughts instead
of getting out of myself and away into some of the best company in the
world. My thinking," she added with a wry little smile, "is done at
night, when my rheumatism will not permit me to sleep."

"So you have seen Margaret," she