But not here did the dislikes end. With all her heart Mrs. Black wished her sister, Mrs. Ormson, at the antipodes; while with all Mrs. Ormson’s heart she wished, not merely Mrs. Black, but also her own husband, Mr. Ormson, at New Zealand. If the gods had known much about human nature—which, judging from results, we may conclude they do not—they would have mated Mr. Black with Mrs. Ormson, Mr. Ormson with Mrs. Black. “There would have been the wife for me,” Mr. Black stated one day, in strict confidence, to Heather, “but she was secured, ma’am—snapped up.” How badly off Heather thought mankind must have been for wives, when two of the sex considered Mrs. Ormson a desirable helpmeet, she did not deem it needful to state. One virtue of Arthur Dudley’s wife was, that she knew when to hold her tongue,—an incalculable advantage in a woman, when such silence does not arise from indifference or stupidity: Heather was neither indifferent nor stupid, but she possessed that one great gift of discretion, without which, as Solomon says (and we may safely consider him an authority), “beauty is to a woman but as a jewel in a swine’s snout.” And Heaven knows there was need both for discretion and patience, in those days, at Berrie Down! There are some people with whom everybody can agree, and Heather, unhappily for herself, chanced to be of that exceptional number. If Mrs. Ormson did not like her—and she did not, for the simple and explicit reason, as she informed all whom it might concern, that Mrs. Dudley “was not one of her sort”—still she was quite unable to resist taking her into her confidence, and telling her all Mr. Ormson’s shortcomings, all Bessie’s delinquencies, all her maternal anxieties, all Mrs. Black’s follies, all the young Marsden’s sins, all the indignities which Miss Hope had heaped upon the devoted head of the late Squire Dudley’s second wife. “Just as she would treat you, if you had not a spirit of your own,” finished Mrs. Ormson, which speech was the more amusing, as Heather, unhappily, had not a spirit of her own, but let the whole party trample over her at their own sweet wills. Then Mrs. Black would, in her weak, limp way, intrude on Heather’s only really quiet hour, by knocking at her dressing-room door, and asking if she might come in for a comfortable chat, “for really everything seems so peaceful when I am here with you alone, that I could stay upstairs for ever;” an arrangement, the very mention of which filled Heather’s heart with a terrible despair. After a time Bessie would, much to Mrs. Black’s chagrin, appear on the stage, and offer to dress Mrs. Dudley’s hair,—an offer Heather always gladly accepted, since Bessie’s chatter seemed infinitely preferable to Mrs. Black’s inane repinings.