"Ay, you always stood our friend, and said we were not such fools as we looked; did you?" "Just so," replied Mrs. Arabel, simply; "and so you see it has turned out. If Mr. Marmaduke can only live elsewhere till something happens to Sir Massingberd--although, indeed, he looks as if nothing ever could hurt him--his life will doubtless be much pleasanter than at the Hall; it is no place for a young gentleman like him, sure<i>ly</i>, although, indeed, things are better there than they were. The dark-eyed foreigneering-looking young person, although, indeed, she was old enough to know better; well, <i>she's</i> gone." "So I have heard," said I drily. "Yes, she went away in a whirlwind, <i>she</i> did," continued Mrs. Arabel, reflectively. "Dear me," replied I, "I never heard that." "Ah, indeed, I daresay not; why, you see, Mr. Long was a little mixed up in it. Perhaps he thought it better not to tell you. Take another glass of cowslip wine, sir; it has been more than ten years in bottle; and the cake is as good a cake as you will put teeth into in all Midshire, though I say it as shouldn't say it. Well; the thing happened in this way, you see. The foreigneering female, she used to throw things at folks; dishes, plates, whatever came first to hand, whenever she was in her tantrums. Mr. Gilmore he had his head opened with a slop-basin, so that you could lay your finger in it; and Oliver Bradford, I believe she fired a gun at him, charged with swan-shot. However, at times, she was quite otherwise, crying and submissive as a child. They said it was Religion up at the Hall; but they knows nothing about that; how should they? It was hysterics, I daresay, and serve her right too. Well, who should come here, the very Sunday after Mr. Marmaduke had run away, and when Sir Massingberd was like a wild man with rage, and couldn't speak without blaspheming, but one of them Methodee preachers as sometimes hold forth upon our common. Now the foreigneering female was a-walking in the park shrubbery, with one of her hysterical fits upon her, I suppose, and what does she hear through the palings but words as I suppose the poor creature never listened to before; and presently out she comes upon the common, and stands up among all the people, with her great eyes swollen with weeping, and her painted cheeks--and I always said they were painted--daubed and smeared with tears. Carter John, who is very much given to that sort of worship, he was there; and he told me she looked for all the world like the woman in the great picture over the communion-table in Crittenden Church, who is wiping the feet of our Lord with her hair.