‘On second thoughts I’m too tired,’ she said; ‘but I will not allow you to delay any longer, Mr. Cross—you will certainly be late as it is.’ He had no course but to withdraw then, which he did, unwillingly enough, after tenderly pressing the widow’s hand and assuring her, quite superfluously, that she might depend on him to look after her interests in every way in his power. Rosalie was disconsolately polishing the hand which had received this undesired token of interest, when the door creaked slowly open, and a tall, gaunt, elderly female, clad in rusty black, and wearing somewhat on the back of her head a flat black bonnet, with the strings untied, entered the room. This was Mrs. Greene, a personage generally to be met with in this neighbourhood in households whose number had recently been either increased or diminished. She was equally at home, as she once remarked, with babies and with corpses; and she filled up the intervals by ‘charing.’ Her appearance was so genteel, and her manner of fulfilling her various duties so elegant, that the clergyman’s daughter had once remarked that she was wonderfully refined for a char-woman; the appellation had stuck to her, and she was commonly known as the ‘refined char-woman’ among such of the ‘gentry’ as occasionally employed her in that capacity. She had come to Littlecomb Farm to ‘lay out’ poor Elias Fiander, and she was remaining on as chief factotum and comforter. For it was n’t to be supposed that the poor young widow ’ud be eq’al to lookin’ after the maids—much less to turn her thoughts to doin’ for herself. She now advanced slowly to the table, and after heaving a deep sigh proceeded to lay the cloth. Rosalie knew that she was burning to enter into conversation, but was too much dispirited to encourage her. But by-and-by, after a preliminary cough, Mrs. Greene remarked in a lugubrious tone: ‘That’s a lovely cap, mum. Everybody was a-sayin’ that you did look charmin’ in your weeds. Ay, that was what they said. “She do look charming”—that was the very thing they said; “’t is a comfort, too,” says they, “to see how nice she do mourn for Mr. Fiander.” They was all a-passing the remark one to the other about it, mum—admirable they said it was.’ ‘Nonsense,’ cried Rosalie wrathfully, but with a little quaver in her voice; ‘it would be very strange, I think, if I did not grieve for such a good husband. I wish people would n’t talk about me,’ she added petulantly. ‘Talk!’ ejaculated Mrs. Greene dismally. ‘Ah, they will talk, mum, you may depend on it. They’ll al’ays talk, and perticlarly about a young widow. Lord, how they did go on about me when poor Greene died! They did n’t leave so much as my furnitur’ alone. Whether I could afford to keep it, or whether I’d be for ridden house and goin’ into lodgin’s, and whether I’d put the children in an orphanage and get married again—it was enough to drive a body silly the way they did go on.’