“But, my good woman,” said Mossgray mildly, “Miss Maxwell has no intention of being a governess, I trust, as she has no need. You will oblige me if you can tell me where I shall find her.” “Well, and that’s just more than I can tell you, Sir; for the Rector’s gone from home, and they say Miss went with them;--but if it’s your pleasure to stay--” “I will stay this night, if you can accommodate me,” was the answer. The landlady curtsied. “I’ll send up Susan to the Rectory for Mary, and mayhap she can tell.” In half an hour Susan was despatched, her mother in the mean time taking upon herself to prepare the unbidden supper; and in about an hour and a half after, Susan returned alone. The Rectory Mary had deserted her post, and was now half a dozen miles away over the fell, visiting her mother, and the girl left in charge had been fain to keep Susan for an hour’s gossip to cheer her loneliness. She knew only that the Rector and her mistress had gone to Scotland; but as Scotland, in the reckoning of Susan of the inn and Sally at the Rectory was a word of quite indefinite signification, meaning sometimes a village like their own, and sometimes enlarging into the dimensions of a dale, or of a great town like the picturesque one near them, which filled up to overbrimming their idea of “the world,” the information thus obtained was anything but satisfactory. So Mossgray endeavoured to ascertain something further from the landlady. “They came here eighteen months past, come Whitsuntide. I mind it particular, because my Susan and more o’ the young folks were up at the confirmation the Bishop had up yonder, in the town, the end of that summer; and it would have done any one’s heart good to have seen my girl in her white muslin, and her cap, and all of them trooping down the dale in the fine morning. But the Scotch lady wouldn’t have her daughter go, though the Rector took the trouble to talk to her himself. I donna understand such things, but mayhap, Sir, the like of you do that are learned, why the young Miss shouldn’t have gone with the rest, like any other Christian. But they were quiet, peaceable folks, no one can say again that; and except it were wandering about the dale, the old lady leaning heavy on Miss, and looking as faint when she came back as if she had done a day’s work, I know no pleasure they ever took, young or old of them; and they cared about nought but books and the post. I have seen them sit on the brow yonder in the summer time reading for hours; and in the winter time I’ve looked in at the window passing by--not that I’m a prying body, or care about my neighbour’s business, but only, there was nought like their ways in the whole dale--and there they would be, with a turf fire you could ’most have held in your two hands, one of them doing fine work, and the other reading; and beautiful Miss can work, Mary at the Rectory says, and it was all for some rich friends that sent