“Why, Coltonslough bein’ a gossiping kind of a place, sir, you’re apt to hear ever so many different versions of the same thing, and it isn’t for me to say which is right and which is wrong. I think, as it’s a long story, sir, you’d better hear the rights of it from Mrs. Burfield.” “A long story!” repeated Francis Tredethlyn, in an undertone,--“a long story! Ah, my poor little cousin--my poor ill-used girl! And it seems only a little while ago when we played together in the churchyard at Landresdale, in the sunny hour when they let us out of school.” It did seem to him but a very little while since he and his cousin had sat side by side, under one of the big yew-trees in Landresdale churchyard, dining upon some simple repast of home-made bread and fat bacon, with a dessert of unripe apples, in the drowsy sultriness of summer noontide. He sat for some few minutes silently thinking of that departed time. The memory of it seemed almost like a sharp physical pain, now that he knew that some great sorrow, some bitter woman’s trial, had come to his cousin. A story about her--a long story! What story should gossiping tongues have to tell of any woman, except a history of suffering and wrong? He did not press the postmaster to tell him anything further: but he said presently, in an altered voice--a voice that had lost something of its power and ringing vibration,-- “I can get to see this Mrs. Burfield, I suppose?” “Yes, sir; I make no doubt you can. She is a very genteel person, is Mrs. Burfield, which she have known better days, and finds herself often a little drove like with her lodgers. Her house is Number 2, sir, in the Terrace, Trafalgar Square, fronting sideways, and rather slantin’ like, to the sea. You can see it, sir, from where you stand.” Following the direction of the postmaster’s extended forefinger, Francis Tredethlyn did see a row of unfinished-looking houses, with the inevitable seaside bow-windows, staring out of a patch of waste ground. Why these houses, and almost all the other houses at Coltonslough, should have slanted away from the sea, obliging their occupants to look out upon the expanse of waters in a sideways and sinister manner, when they might have been built directly facing that single feature of attraction, was a problem far beyond the comprehension of any visitor to the infantine watering-place. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI. A VERY OLD STORY.