The shock given me by those few overheard words--“You should not have spoken to her. Don’t you know she comes from the house on the marsh?”--was so great that I lay awake half the night, at first trying to reconcile Mr. Rayner’s pathetic story with the horror of everything connected with the Alders expressed by the girl to her companion, and then asking myself whether it would be wise to stay in a house to which it was plain that a mystery of some sort was clinging. At last, when my nerves were calmed somewhat and I began to feel sleepy, I made up my mind to set down those unlucky words as the prejudiced utterance of some narrow-minded country-girl, to whom the least touch of unconventionality seemed a dreadful thing. However, I could not dismiss the incident at once from my mind, and the remembrance of it sharpened my attention to the manner of the salutations that Mr. Rayner exchanged with his neighbors the next day. Although Geldham church was only a short distance from the Alders, Mrs. Rayner was not strong enough to walk; so she and her husband drove there in the brougham, while Haidee and I went on foot. We started before them, and Mr. Rayner was carefully helping his wife out of the carriage as we got to the gate. There was nothing noticeable in the way in which they bowed to one person, shook hands with another, exchanged a few words with a third; then we all went into the little church, which had been erected but a few years, and of which one aisle was still unbuilt.