He must contrive an interview with the girl Dredge, and this Rosilla was commissioned to arrange for. If Mrs. Bullivant's maid would name her own time and place for meeting a certain gentleman, name unknown, and there answer a few questions he would put to her having no reference to herself or her own business, she would find her pocket the richer by a couple of guineas. Rosilla at once undertook to do her best to arrange the meeting in question, which took place a couple evenings later at a solitary spot a little way outside the palings of the Homecroft grounds. The gypsy-girl, of her own accord, went a little way apart out of hearing while the _gorgio_ and the lady's-maid said what they had to say to each other. Even before she quite comprehended what it was Dare wanted her to do, Moggy did not hesitate to confess that, in her own words, she hated her mistress "worse than poison," and that because of the latter's treatment of her, and of the insults she saw fit to heap upon her. In reply to this, Dare very naturally asked her why she did not leave Mrs. Bullivant and go into service elsewhere. Thereupon Moggy burst out crying, and, after sobbing quietly for a little while, confided to Dare that she had had a "misfortune," and had thereby forfeited her character, and that it was Mrs. Bullivant's knowledge of this fact which enabled her to trample on the unhappy girl in the way she did. Moggy could tell Dare little more about the strange child than he had already learnt from Rosilla. Nor had he expected that she would be able to do so. What he had now to arrange for was the future, and he did not part from the girl till she had given him her promise to furnish him daily with a written report of everything she could hear or gather having reference to the child. This report she was to place each day after nightfall in the hollow of a certain tree, whence it would be fetched by Rosilla, who would play the part of messenger between her and Dare. Later, there would be three more guineas for her, and she confessed that she was badly in need of money to help to pay for the keep of her child. Moggy kept her promise, and night after night Dare received at the hands of the gypsy-girl her brief and half-illegible reports, the writing of which caused her many groans, and was the cause of much perturbation of spirit. But it was not till ten days had gone by that she found anything of consequence to communicate. Then, indeed, her news was of a sufficiently startling kind.