Mrs. Sudlow was a small, slight, fair woman, with chilly blue eyes, pinched features, and a somewhat worn and acid expression; but whether the latter was due to the fact that she found the cares of a numerous family weigh heavily upon her, or whether it had its origin in those fictitious troubles which some women make a point of creating for themselves, hugging them all the more fondly in that they have no substantial existence, was a moot point, and one which, happily, no one was called upon to decide. The Vicar laid down the _Times_, which he had been making a pretence of reading, hemmed and gave a tug at the bottom of his waistcoat. His wife was seated opposite him, busy with some fancy embroidery. "My dear, I picked up young Winslade this afternoon, or, to speak more accurately, he picked me up, at Downhills station. He was on his way from London to spend a few days with his mother." Not the slightest notice took Mrs. Sudlow. Her husband might have been addressing himself to the chimney-piece for any heed vouchsafed by her. Again the Vicar cleared his voice. "From what he told me, it appears that he has been over to America on some special matter for his employer, and, by a rather singular coincidence, it so happened that he crossed from New York in the same steamer that brought my sister and Fanny. By the way, I don't think that Fan, in the letter she wrote us after landing, as much as mentioned young Winslade's name." "Why should she? Doubtless to her such a detail seemed too insignificant to be worth recording." This was not a very promising beginning, but there could be no drawing back now; whatever might be the result, he must go through with that which he had made up his mind to say. "There may, perhaps, have been another and a totally opposite reason why Fan made no mention of Philip Winslade in her letter." "What _do_ you mean? The older you get, Louth, the fonder you become of beating about the bush when you have anything to say." "That's your opinion, is it, my love?" he demanded, not without a shade of irritation. "Well, then, in what I am about to tell you there shall be no beating about the bush--none whatever. Here, in a few words, is the long and the short of it. Fan and young Winslade met on board the _Parthenia_, doubtless as old acquaintances, they having known each other for years. My sister being prostrated by sea-sickness, they were naturally thrown much together, and by the time Liverpool was reached had contrived to fall in love with each other, and come to some sort of a mutual understanding in the affair. Had Winslade and I not met in the train, it was his intention to have sought an interview with me in the course of Monday next." Mrs. Sudlow's needle came to a halt midway in a stitch, and the line of her lips hardened till the division between them was scarcely perceptible.