"Oh, did she, though! Sarah told me that that mourning was on her back before ever Lady Ellis died. I tell you, I tell you also, ladies, she put on the black for Robert Hunter." "Who put on black for him?" questioned Mrs. Macpherson, in a puzzle. "Mary Anne Thornycroft." "I never heard of such a thing! What did she do that for?" "Why _do_ girls do foolish things?" returned Mrs. Copp. "To show her respect for him, I suppose." "A funny way of showing it!" cried Mrs. Macpherson. "Robert Hunter is doing very well where he's gone." Mrs. Copp turned her eyes on the professor's wife with a prolonged stare. "It is to be hoped he _is_, ma'am," she retorted, emphatically. "He is doing so well that his coming back and marrying her wouldn't surprise me in the least. The Thornycrofts won't have no need to set up their backs again him if he can show he is in the way of making his fortune." "Why, who are you talking of?" asked Mrs. Copp, after a pause and another gaze. "Of Robert Hunter. He has gone and left us. Perhaps you did not know it, ma'am?" "Yes, I _did_," said Mrs. Copp, with increased emphasis. "Coastdown has too good cause to know it, unfortunately." This remark caused Mrs. Macpherson to become meek again. "I had a note from him this week," she observed. "It come in a letter to the prefessor: he sent it me up from his laborory." The corners of Anna's mouth were gradually lengthening, almost--she could not help the feeling--in a sort of fear. It must be remembered that she knew nothing of the fact that it was not Robert Hunter who had died. "Perhaps you'll repeat that again, ma'am," said Mrs. Copp, eyeing Mrs. Macpherson in her sternest manner. "You had a note from _him_, Robert Hunter?" "Yes, I had, ma'am. Writ by himself." "Where was it written from?" Mrs. Macpherson hesitated, conscious of her defects in the science of locality. "The prefessor would know," said she; "I'm not much of a geographer myself. Anyway it come from where he is, somewhere over in t'other hemisphere." To a lady of Mrs. Copp's extensive travels, round the world a dozen times and back again, the words "over in t'other hemisphere," taken in conjunction with Robert Hunter's known death and burial, conveyed the idea that the celestial hemisphere, and not the terrestrial, was alluded to. She became convinced of one of two things: that the speaker before her was awfully profane, or else mad. "I know the letters were six weeks reaching us," continued Mrs. Macpherson. "I suppose it would take about that time to get here from the place." Mrs. Copp pushed her chair back in a heat. "This is the first time I ever came out to drink tea with the insane, and I hope it will be the last," she cried, speaking without reserve, according to her custom. "Ma'am, if you are not a model of profanity, you ought to be in Bedlam."