Amongst Jelly's other qualities and endowments, might be ranked one that was pre-eminent--love of admiration. Jelly could not remember to have been without an "acquaintance" for above a month at a time since the days when she left off pinafores. No sooner did she quarrel with one young man and dismiss him, than she took up another. Dallory wondered that of all her numerous acquaintances she had never married: but, as Jelly coolly said, to have a suitor at your beck and call was one thing, and to be tied to a husband was quite another. So Jelly was Jelly still; and perhaps it might be conceded that the fault was her own. She liked her independence. The reigning "acquaintance" at this period happened to be Timothy Wilks. Jelly patronized _him_; _he_ was devoted to her. There was a trifling difference in their ages--some ten years probably, and all on Jelly's side--but such a disparity had often happened before. Jelly had distinguished Tim by the honour of taking him to be her young man; and when the damaging whisper fell upon him, that he had probably written the anonymous letter resulting in the death of Edmund North, Jelly resented the aspersion far more than Timothy did. "I'll find out who did do it, if it costs me a year's wages and six months' patience," avowed Jelly to herself in the first burst of indignation. But Jelly found she could not arrive at that satisfactory result any sooner than other people. It is true, she possessed a slight clue that they did not, in the few memorable words she had overheard that moonlight night between her mistress and Dr. Rane, but they did not assist her. The copy of the letter was said to have dropped out of Dr. Rane's pocketbook on somebody's carpet, and he denied that it had so dropped. Neither more nor less could Jelly make of the matter than this: and she laboured under the disadvantage of not being able to speak of what she had overheard, unless she confessed that she had been a listener. Considering who had been the speakers, Jelly did not choose to do that. From that time until this, quite two months, had the matter rankled in Jelly's mind; she had kept her ears open and put cautious questions whenever she thought they might avail, and all to no purpose. But in this, the first week of July, Jelly had a little light thrown on the clue by Molly Green. The very day that damsel arrived at Dr. Rane's as helpmate to Phillis, and Jelly had gone in with her domineering orders, the conversation happened to turn on plum-pudding--Phillis having made a currant-dumpling for dinner, and let the water get into it--and Molly Green dropped a few words which Jelly's ears caught up. They were only to the effect that Mrs. Gass had asked her whether she did not let fall on her carpet a receipt for making plum-pudding, the night of Edmund North's attack; which receipt Mrs. Gass had said, might have belonged to madam, and been brought from the Hall by Molly Green's petticoats. Jelly put a wary question