“And now here is another thing which is very strange: her servants have none of them been with her long. They were all engaged together, three months ago in London, not by Mrs. Dale herself, but by an old lady whose name nobody seems to know. Now isn’t that rather remarkable? They all came down here, and had the place ready for their mistress, before they so much as saw her.” Mrs. Bonnington leaned back in her chair, and drew on her brown cotton gloves further. Mrs. Rose wondered again as to the source of this information. She felt a little ashamed of listening to all this gossip, and was less inclined than her friend to take a suspicious view of the case, strange though it was. So she contented herself with murmured interjections, to fill up the pause before Mrs. Bonnington went on again: “However, I have got a clew to where she came from, for a van-load of furniture came down before she arrived, and it came from Todcaster.” “Todcaster!” echoed Mrs. Rose. “Then we shall soon know something more about her. Mr. Rose’s old friend, Mrs. Haybrow, is coming down to see us early next month. She lived near Todcaster when she was a girl, and she often goes back to the old place, and keeps in touch with all the people about there.” “Well,” said Mrs. Bonnington, rising from her chair, and speaking in a rather more stilted tone than at first, with the consciousness that her news had hardly been received as she had expected, “I sincerely trust we may find we have been mistaken. No one will rejoice more unfeignedly than I if she proves to be indeed what she gives herself out to be. Indeed, if she had received me frankly at the outset, I would have shown her such Christian sympathy as one soul can give to another without asking any questions. And it is only in the interests of our young people that I lift up my voice now.” The Vicar’s wife then took her leave, and went on her way to complete her morning rounds. She was rather a terrible person, this little, faded middle-aged woman with the curate’s voice and the curate’s manner, uniting, as she did, a desperate interest in other people’s affairs with a profound conviction that her interference in them could only be for good. But she had her good points. A devoted, submissive, and worshipful wife, she modified her worship by considering herself the Vicar’s guardian angel. A parish busybody and tyrant, she never spared herself and could show true womanly kindness to such of her husband’s parishioners as were not of “a froward spirit.” Unluckily, she had not the power of conciliating, but had, on the contrary, a grand talent for raising up antagonism in unregenerate minds like those of the unfortunate Mabin.