s not interested in
general about what was said, but now and then a personal question would
rouse her. She thought of the woman with the blue eyes, so wide open
and red with crying, and then of Dick with his laugh which it always
made her cheerful to think of. Chatty had in her mind no possible
link of connection between these two: but the absence of any power of
comprehending the abstract in her made her lay hold all the more keenly
of the personal, and the thought of Dick in the act of letting in
poisonous gases upon that unhappy creature filled her with horror. She
was indignant at so false an accusation. "Mr. Cavendish," she repeated
with a little energy, "never would have done that."

"It is all a freak of those scientific men," said Mrs. Wilberforce.
"Look at the poor people, they can do a great deal more, and support a
great deal more, than we can: yet they live among bad smells. I think
they rather like them. I am sure my nursery is on my mind night and day,
if there is the least little whiff of anything; but the children are as
strong as little ponies--and where is the drainage there?"

With this triumphant argument she suddenly rose, declaring that she knew
the brougham was at the door, and that Mrs. Warrender would be late for
the train. She kissed and blessed both the ladies as she took leave of
them. "Come back soon, and don't forget us," she said to Chatty; while
to Mrs. Warrender she gave a little friendly pat on the shoulder. "You
won't say anything, not even to true friends like Herbert and me? but a
secret like that can't be kept, and though you mayn't think so,
everybody knows."

"Do you think that is true, mamma?" Chatty asked when the wet umbrellas
had again gone glimmering through the shrubberies and under the trees,
and the travellers were left alone.

"That everybody knows? It is very likely. There is no such thing as a
secret in a little world like ours; everybody knows everything. But
still they cannot say that they have it by authority from you and me. It
is time enough to talk of it when it is a fact, if it is to be."

"But you have not any doubt of it, mamma?"

"I have doubt of everything till it is done; even," she said, with a
smile as the wheels of the brougham cut the gravel and came round with a
little commotion to the door, "of our going away: though I allow that it
seems very like it now."

They did go away, at last, leaving the Warren very solitary, damp, and
gray, under the