“Martha, have you _heard_? Oh, well, I know you _haven’t_ heard! That’s the reason I’m here. It just got around to me, and I didn’t wait a minute. I’ve come right over to tell you; it’s the part of kindness. I mean about that woman you’ve got in your house. You haven’t heard?” Miss Martha anticipated battle, murder, and sudden death. “No. What is it? Is she----?” “Oh, nothing’s happened to her! Goodness, it’s a great deal worse than _that_!” She lowered her voice with cautious glances right and left, though they were alone. “Martha, it’s just got out who she is! You know everybody thought there was _something_ the matter, she was so weird looking. Well, she’s _notorious_! The notorious Tillie Shields, that’s what they call her. You said her name was Matilda. Well, that’s who she is!” Mrs. Seabury concluded, leaning back in triumph. For an instant Miss Martha was conscious only of acute vexation. “Notorious _how_, Eliza? What way?” she stammered, groping for objections, refutations. “Oh, for mercy’s sake, the way they all are!” Mrs. Seabury rejoined in sharp impatience. “Well, to be sure, you’ve never been married,” she added more leniently, and followed up this apparently irrelevant statement with others very much to the point. “She had a _place_--one of those _places_--in the red-light district, you know. It was a good while ago--I don’t suppose she’s really notorious any more, she’s too old. But that’s who she is, the notorious Tillie Shields.” Miss Martha, envisaging calamity, averted her mind in desperate unwillingness, desperate hope. “But how do you know? Who told you?” “Why, Martha, it’s all over! _Everybody’s_ heard! It seems she had a fuss with the Gowdy’s cook over their cat or the birds or something----” Mrs. Seabury entered into graphic and approximately accurate details, winding up with: “And the officer used to be on the police force, so, of course, he recognized her right away! I _told_ you you oughtn’t to have taken her without a reference.” “But the bank said----” “Oh, the bank!” said Mrs. Seabury scornfully. “She probably keeps a big account there, and that’s all they care about. It’s awful to think how that money was made, but that’s nothing to a bank.--Oh, nobody suspects _you_ of knowing, Martha,” she interrupted herself quickly, misreading her friend’s silence. “Nobody would believe _that_ of you for a minute. We all _know_ you didn’t know.”