‘Perhaps so. But no, he is not like her,’ says the girl earnestly. ‘No, it is not Mr. Wyndham she reminds me of.’ ‘My goodness, Susan,’ says Betty suddenly, ‘perhaps we should not have left all those cakes with the children. They will make themselves ill, and we shall have a horrid time to-morrow.’ ‘Oh, and Bonnie!’ says Susan, paling. She kisses Ella hurriedly and races home again up the quiet little shadowy road, without waiting for the slower coming of those behind her. CHAPTER XLIII. ‘Fortune makes quick despatch, and in a day May strip you bare as beggary itself.’ ‘Is this thing true, George?’ ‘What thing?’ asks Crosby. ‘Oh, you know—you know. You’—turning her cold eyes on him with actual fury in their depths—‘must have known it all along.’ ‘My dear Mrs. Prior, if you would only explain!’ Mrs. Prior motions him to a seat. She is already dressed for dinner, though it is barely seven o’clock. She had, however, determined—after a stormy interview with Josephine on their return from the Rectory—on seeing Wyndham at once, and demanding an explanation with regard to ‘that creature,’ as she called her. Wyndham, it seemed, however, had not yet returned. ‘Gone to see her, no doubt,’ cried Mrs. Prior, with ever-rising wrath; and thus foiled in her efforts to see him, she had sent for her host, who, of course, being a bosom friend of Wyndham’s, and living down here, must have known all about it from the first. ‘Do you think I need?’ says she, with a touch of scorn. ‘Are you going to tell me deliberately that you do not know what this—woman—is to Paul?’ ‘His tenant,’ says Crosby calmly. ‘What’s the matter with that? Lots of fellows have tenants.’ ‘That is quite true. It is also true that “lots of fellows”’—she draws in her breath as if suffocating—‘have——’ ‘Oh, come now!’ says Crosby. ‘You would have me mince matters,’ says she in her low, cold voice, that is now vibrating with anger. ‘It is inadmissible, of course, to mention things of this sort. But I have my poor girl’s interest at stake, and I dare to go far—for her. This arrangement of Paul’s down here, close to you’—she gives him a sudden quick glance—‘in the very midst of us, as it were, is a direct insult.’ ‘So it certainly would be, if matters were as you suppose. I am confident, however, that they are not. I have Paul’s word for it.’ ‘Oh, a man’s word on such an occasion as this!’ ‘Well, I suppose a man’s word, if you know the man, is as good on one occasion as another,’ says Crosby. ‘And why should he lie to me about it? I have no interest in his tenants. If, as you seem to fancy, she is——’