“The little deceitful cat!” she exclaimed, addressing her husband, whose beer-soaked intelligence could scarcely take in the position, even when the letter had been twice read to him,—“to think of her sneaking away like an eel into a rat hole! Hopes the money won’t make much difference to us, does she! Well, it is pretty well everything we have to live on, that’s all; though there’s one thing, Joan or no Joan, that old Levinger shall go on paying, or I’ll know the reason why. It seems that he helped her off. Well, I think that I can see his game there, but hang me if I can see hers, unless Sir Henry is going to look after her wheresoever she’s gone, which ain’t likely, for he can’t afford it. I call to mind that’s just how her mother went off two or three and twenty years ago. And you know how she came back and what was the end of her. Joan will go the same way and come to the same end, or something like it. It’s in the blood, and you mark my words, Gillingwater. Oh! that girl’s a master fool if ever there was one. She might have been the lawful wife of either of them, and now she’ll let both slip through her fingers to earn six shillings a week by sewing, or some such nonsense. Well, she did right not to let me know what she was after, or I’d have given her what for by way of good-bye. And now what shall I say to Samuel? I suppose that he will want his money back. No play, no pay that’ll be his tune. Well, want must be his master, that’s all. He was a fool not to make a better use of his chances when he had them. But I shall never get another stiver out of him unless I can bring her back again. The sly little hypocrite!” And Mrs. Gillingwater paused exhausted, and shook her fist in her husband’s face, more from habit than for any other reason. “Do you mean to say that Joan is gone?” said that worthy, twirling his hat vacantly on the table. “Then I’m sorry.” “Sorry, you lout?—why didn’t you stop her, then?” “I didn’t stop her because I didn’t know that she was going; and if I had, I shouldn’t have interfered. But I’m real sorry, because she was a lady, she was, who always spoke soft and civil—not a red-faced, screeching varmint of a woman such as some I knows on. Well, she’s gone, and a good job too for her sake; I wish that I could go after her,”—and, dodging the blow which his enraged wife aimed at his head, Mr. Gillingwater sauntered off to drown his regrets at Joan’s departure in some of the worst beer in Bradmouth.