“In the case of this Mrs. Dale,” said she in a lower voice, “go on just as you have begun. Do not call upon her. Do not have anything to do with her. To tell you the truth, it was about her that I came to see you this morning. She has already brought mischief into our own peaceful home. She is a dangerous woman.” “Dear me! You don’t mean that!” said Mrs. Rose with vivid interest. “Unhappily I do. My son Rudolph came back from his ship only ten days ago, and already he can think of nothing but this Mrs. Dale.” “After having had the unpardonable insolence to leave your call unreturned, she has got hold of your son?” gasped Mrs. Rose. “Well, not exactly that, as far as I know,” admitted the Vicar’s wife. “He says he has never spoken to her. And the dear boy has never told me an untruth before.” “But if this dreadful woman has entangled him, of course she might make him say anything!” cried Mrs. Rose in sympathetic agonies. “I should not like to accuse a fellow-woman of doing that,” replied Mrs. Bonnington, severely; “but I think it is a bad and unnatural sign, when my son, who has never taken the least notice of any of the young girls in the neighborhood, becomes absorbed, in a few days, in the doings of a person who is a complete stranger to him and who calls herself a widow.” “Then don’t you think,” purred Mrs. Rose, with the eagerness of one who scents a scandal, “that she _is_ a widow?” There was a pause. And Mrs. Bonnington spoke next, with the deliberation of one who has a great duty to perform. “I should be very sorry to have it said of me that I was the first to start a rumor which might be thought unchristian or unkind,” she said with a deprecatory wave of the brown cotton gloves she wore in the mornings. “But I have thought it my duty to make inquiries, and I deeply regret to say that I have found out several things which lead me to the conclusion that this person has settled down in our midst under false pretences.” “You don’t say so!” “You shall judge for yourself. In the first place, although she calls herself Mrs. Dale, the initials on some of her linen are ‘D. M.’ Now M. does not stand for ‘Dale,’ does it?” “Perhaps her maiden name began with M.,” suggested Mrs. Rose. “My informant tells me,” went on Mrs. Bonnington, as if offended by the interruption, “that in her old books, school-books and work of that sort, there is written the name ‘Dorothy Leatham.’ So that she seems to have passed already by three different names. I leave it to your own common sense whether that is not a curious circumstance, considering that she is still young.” “It is certainly curious, very curious. And--and--” Mrs. Rose hardly liked to ask on what authority her visitor made these statements, which savored strongly of the back-stairs. She had hardly paused an instant before Mrs. Bonnington rushed into further details: