"And I know what will come of it," said Williams. "What has come afore: the money will have to come out o' some one's pocket; and master never knew how to keep his to himself, never, as long as I've known him. To be sure, he hadn't got a great deal in the old days. But I know what'll happen; he'll just have to pay up now--he's that soft," said Williams; "a man that can't say no to a woman. Not that I care for the money. I'd a deal sooner he gave her an allowance, or set her up in some other place, or just give her a good round sum--as he could afford to do--and get shut of her. That is what I should advise. Just a round sum and get shut of her." "I've always heard," said Miss Fletcher, "as the money was my lady's, and not from the Randolph side at all." "What's hers is his," said Williams; "what's my lady's is her husband's; and a good bargain too--on her side." "I declare," cried Fletcher energetically, stung with that sense of wrong to her own side which gives heat to party feeling--"I declare if any man took my money to keep up his--his--his old sweetheart, I'd murder him. I'd take his life, that's what I should do." "Poor dear," said Mrs. Freshwater, wiping her eyes with her apron. "Poor dear! She'll never murder no one, my lady. Bless her innocent face. I only hope as she'll never find it out." "Sooner than she don't find it out I'll tell her myself," cried Williams. "Now I don't understand you women. You'd let my lady be deceived and made game of, rather than tell her." "Made game of!" cried Fletcher, with a shriek of indignation. "I should like to see who dared to do that." "Oh, they'll dare do it, soon enough, and take their fun out of her--it's just what them foreigners are fond of," said Williams, who knew them and all their tricks down to the ground, as he said. Still, however, notwithstanding his evil reports, good Mrs. Freshwater, who was as good-natured as she was fat, could scarcely make up her mind to believe all that of the Contessa. "She do look so sweet, and talk so pretty, not as if she was foreign at all," the housekeeper said.