"I'll never do that," said Roland, impulsively earnest in his sincerity. "I'll bring you home the pound each week, and then I shan't be tempted to change it. Look here"--taking two sovereigns from his pocket--"that's to steer on ahead with. Does she live here?" he added, going back without ceremony to the subject of Miss Rye. "Alletha, do you call her? what an odd name!" "The name was a mistake of the parson's when she was christened. It was to have been Allethea. I've had her with me four or five years now. She is a dressmaker, Mr. Yorke, and works sometimes at home, and sometimes out." "She'd be uncommonly good-looking if she were not such a shadow," commented Roland with candour. Mrs. Jones gave her head a toss, as if the topic displeased her. "Shadow, indeed! Yes, and she's likely to be one. Never was any pig more obstinate than she." "Pigs!" cried Roland with energy, "you should see the obstinacy of Natal pigs, Mrs. J. _I_ have. Drove 'em too." "It couldn't equal hers," disputed Mrs. J., with intense acrimony. "She is wedded to the memory of a runaway villain, Mr. Yorke, that's what she is! A good opportunity presented itself to her lately of settling, but she'd not take it. She'd sooner fret out her life after _him_, than look upon an honest man. The two pigs together by the tail, and let 'em pull two ways till they drop, they'd not equal her. And for a runaway; a man that disgraced himself!" "What did he do?" asked curious Roland. "It's not very good to repeat," said Mrs. Jones tartly. "She lived in Birmingham, our native place, till the mother died, and then she came to me at Helstonleigh. First thing she tells me was, that she was engaged to be married to some young man in an office there, George Winter: and over she goes to Birmingham the next Christmas on a visit to her aunt, on purpose to meet him: stays there a week, and comes home again. Well, Mr. Yorke, this grand young man, this George Winter, about whom I had _my_ doubts, though I'd never seen him, got into trouble before three months had gone by: he and a fellow-clerk did something wrong with the money, and Winter decamped." "I wonder if he went to Port Natal?" mused Roland. "We had some queer people over there." "It don't much matter where he went," returned Mrs. Jones, hotly. "He did go, and he never came back, and he took Alletha's common sense away with him: what with him and what with the dreadful affair at our house of that poor Mr. Ollivera, she has never been herself since. It both happened about the same time." Roland recalled what he had recently heard from Jenner regarding the death of the barrister, and felt a little at sea. "What was Ollivera to her?" he asked. "What! why, nothing," said Mrs. Jones. "And she's no better than a lunatic to have taken it as she did. Whether it's that, or whether it's the pining after the other precious runaway, _I_ don't know, but one of the two's preying upon her. There's Mr. Ollivera!"