When Daphne and Gerald were gone, and the fair woodland scene was empty, a third figure came slowly out of the fir-grove, a substantial form clad in a rusty black-silk gown, short petticoats, side-laced cashmere boots, and a bonnet which was only thirty years behind the prevailing fashion. This antique form belonged to Jane Mowser, who carried a little basket of an almost infantine shape, and who had been gathering wild strawberries for her afternoon refreshment. While thus engaged she had espied Daphne’s white frock gleaming athwart the dark stems of the firs, and had contrived to skirt the pathway, and keep the young lady in view. Thus she had been within earshot when Daphne and Gerald Goring met, and had heard the greater part of their conversation. ‘I’ve known it and foreseen it. I knew it would come to this from the very beginning,’ she muttered breathlessly; ‘and I’m thankful that I’m the chosen instrument for finding them out. Oh, my poor Miss Madoline, what a viper you have nourished in your loving bosom! Oh, the artfulness of that anteloping girl! pretending to reject him, and leading him on all the time, and meaning to run away with him to-morrow, and be married on the sly at Geneva, as truly as my name is Mowser. But I’ll put a stop to their goings on. I’ll let in the light upon their dark ways. Jane Mowser will prove a match for an antelope and a traitor.’ The little basket trembled in Mrs. Mowser’s agitated grasp, as she trotted briskly downhill to the hotel. ‘I’ll make their baseness known to Sir Vernon,’ said Mowser, ‘and if he has the heart of a man he’ll crush that fair-haired young viper.’ Having detested Daphne from the day of her birth, Mowser now felt a virtuous thrill, the sense of a relieved conscience, in the idea that Daphne had justified her dislike. It would have been pain and grief to her had the girl turned out well; but to have her judgment borne out, her wisdom made clear as daylight, every evil feeling of her heart fully excused by the girl’s bad conduct, this was comfort which weighed heavily in the scale against her honest sorrow for the mistress whom she honestly loved. She had no idea that the revelation she was going to make must necessarily lead to the cancelment of Madoline’s engagement. Her notion was that if Sir Vernon were made acquainted with the treachery that had been going on in his family circle, he would turn his younger daughter out of doors, and compel Gerald Goring to keep faith with his elder daughter. She allowed nothing for those finer shades of feeling which generally lead to the breaking of matrimonial engagements. It seemed to her that if a man had got himself engaged to a girl, and wanted to cry off, he must be taken by the scruff off his neck, as it were, and made to fulfill his promise.