It was on an afternoon in the pleasant month of May that Miss Tuttilow, who never let a week go by without calling at least once at the Vicarage, said to her "dear friend," Mrs. Sudlow: "Gregory has gone back home after a week of the best fishing he has had for years. By the way, the mention of his name reminds me of a rather curious circumstance which happened the other day. He and I had walked into the town together--he to buy some tobacco and I some feminine fal-lals--when whom should we meet face to face but Mrs. Winslade. She favoured me with one of her indefinite smiles, bowed slightly, and passed on. 'You seem to know that lady. Who is she?' queried my brother, as he turned for a moment to look after her. Whereupon I told him as much as anybody in Iselford knows about Mrs. Winslade, which, as you and I are aware, is very little; and then, of course, asked him what _he_ knew about her? 'Nothing at all,' was his reply. 'it was merely that she put me very strongly in mind of a person, one of your sex, whom I had occasion to meet professionally two or three and twenty years ago. The person in question was the wife of a notorious forger, Philip Cordery by name, who engaged our firm to defend him at his trial. I found Mrs. Cordery to be a very charming woman, and I pitied her from the bottom of my heart for being wedded to such a scoundrel. As it happens, I have a very excellent memory for faces, and really, allowing for the lapse of time, your friend Mrs. Winslade bears a quite startling likeness to the Mrs. Cordery of so long ago. But, of course, it can be nothing more than a coincidence.' Singular, was it not, my dear friend? And it would be still more singular, would it not? should Mrs. Winslade and Mrs. Cordery turn out to be one and the same person. But even if such were the case nobody in Iselford would be able to prove it." "You are mistaken," said Mrs. Sudlow, "_I_ could prove it. I have known of it for the last two months." Miss Tuttilow jumped up as if a cracker had exploded under her chair. "Goodness gracious me!" was all she was able to gasp out in the first access of her amazement. Next moment Mrs. Sudlow could have bitten her tongue off with vexation. She had had no intention whatever of enlightening her visitor as to the extent of her knowledge, and it was not until the latter ventured the assertion that nobody in Iselford would be able to identify Mrs. Winslade with Mrs. Cordery, that she, all unwittingly, let slip that fatal sentence, which it was impossible to recall, and equally impossible to soften down, or twist to any other meaning than its few simple words conveyed. She felt excessively annoyed with herself; but that in nowise altered what was done. All she could now do was to minimise the effects of her indiscretion as far as it might be in her power to do so.