uriosity; but that was not the only
feeling which Mrs. Woodgate entertained towards the lady who was to be a
nearer neighbor of her own sex and class than any she could count as
yet. On the class question Morna had no misgivings; nevertheless, she
was prepared for a surprise. Both she and her husband had seen a good
deal of Mr. Steel. Morna had perhaps seen the best of him, since she was
at once young and charming, and not even an unwilling and personally
innocent candidate for his hand, like honest Sybil Venables. Yet Morna
herself was not more attracted than repelled by the inscrutable
personality of this rich man dropped from the clouds, who had never a
word to say about his former life, never an anecdote to tell, never an
adventure to record, and of whom even Mrs. Venables had not the courage
to ask questions. What sort of woman would such a man marry, and what
sort of woman would marry such a man? Morna asked herself the one
question after the other, almost as often as she set her right foot in
front of her left; but she was not merely inquisitive in the matter, she
had a secret and instinctive compassion for the woman who had done this
thing.

"She will not have a soul to call her own, poor thing!" thought Morna,
as indignantly as though the imaginary evil was one of the worst that
could befall; for the vicar's wife had her little weaknesses, not by any
means regarded as such by herself; and this was one of the last things
that could have been said about her, or that she would have cared to
hear.

The woodland path led at last into the long avenue, and there was
Normanthorpe House at the end of the vista; an Italian palace
transplanted into the north of England, radiantly white between the
green trees and blue sky, with golden cupola burning in the sun; perhaps
the best specimen extant to mark a passing fashion in Georgian
architecture, but as ill-suited to the Delverton district as an
umbrella-tent to the North Pole. A cool grotto on a really hot day, the
house was an ice-pit on any other; or so Mrs. Woodgate fancied, fresh
from the cosey Vicarage, and warm from her rapid walk, as she stepped
into another temperature, across polished marble that struck a chill
through the soles of her natty brown shoes, and so into the lofty
drawing-room with pilasters and elaborate architraves to the doors. What
a place for a sane man to build in bleak old Delverton, even before
there was any Northborough to blacken and foul t