“Oh, the woman,” said the detective, carelessly; “some bit of a girl as he married, and as was pretty, I don’t doubt, in her day. There’s nothing particular about her. She’s very fond of her children, and very free in her talk, like most women when you take ’em the right way. Bless you, sir, when I started her talking of her husband, it was all that I could do to get her to leave off. She don’t think she’s got any thing to hide. He was a gentleman, that’s clear. He wouldn’t have been near so frank about himself, I’ll be bound. She ain’t a lady exactly, but there’s something about her--and awful open in her way, with them front teeth--” “Has _she_ got front teeth?” said Mr. Brownlow, with some eagerness. He pitched upon it as the first personal attribute he had yet heard of, and then he added, with a little confusion, “like the boy--” “Yes sir--exactly like the young fellow,” said his companion; “but there ain’t nothing about her to interest _us_. She told me as she once had friends as lived in Masterton; but she’s the sort of woman as don’t mind much about friends as long as her children is well off; and I judge she was of well-to-do folks, that was awful put out about her marriage. A man like that, sir, might be far above her, and have friends that was far above her, and yet it’s far from the kind of marriage as would satisfy well-to-do folks.” “I thought she came from the Isle of Man,” said Mr. Brownlow, in what he meant for an indifferent way. “As a child, sir--as a child,” said the detective, with easy carelessness. “Her friends left there when she was but a child, and then they went where there was a garrison, where she met with her good gentleman. She was never in Masterton herself. It was after she was married and gone, and, I rather think, cast off by all belonging to her, that they came to live here.”