Mortified and enraged, Mrs. Spiewell grew scarlet, but threw herself into the seat designated, resolved to snatch a glimpse of the interior the instant the servant had disappeared. Very softly Elsie closed and securely latched the door on the inside, knowing that at that moment her mistress was sitting in the oriel window of the front parlor. In vain the visitor tried and twisted the bolt, and, completely baffled, tears of chagrin moistened her eyes. She had scarcely time to regain her seat, when Elsie reappeared, bearing on a handsome salver a wine-glass, silver goblet, and an elegant basket filled with cake. "Mrs. Gerome presents her compliments, and sends you this fifty dollar bill for whatever society you represent." Too thoroughly discomfited to conceal her pique and indignation, Mrs. Spiewell snatched letters and donation, and, without lingering an instant, swept haughtily down the steps, "shaking off the dust of her feet" against "Solitude" and its incorrigible owner. An innocent impertinence once coldly frustrated soon takes unto itself a sting and branding-irons, and thus, what was originally merely idle curiosity, becomes bitter malice; and henceforth the worthy minister's gossiping wife lost no opportunity of inveighing against the superciliousness of the stranger, and of insinuating that some very extraordinary circumstances led her "to fear that something was radically wrong about that poor Mrs. Gerome, for troubles that could not be poured into the sympathetic ears of pastors and of pastors' wives must be very dark, indeed." Whenever the name of the new-comer was mentioned, Mrs. Spiewell compressed her lips, shook her head, and shrugged her round shoulders; and, of course, persons present surmised that the "minister's lady" was acquainted with melancholy facts which charity prevented her from divulging. Many of the grievances and ills that afflict society spring not from sinful, envenomed hearts, but from weak souls and empty heads; and Mrs. Spiewell, who sat up with all the measle-stricken, teething, sick children in her husband's charge, and would have felt disgraced had she missed a meeting of the "Dorcas Society," or of the "Barefeet Relief Club," would have been duly shocked if any one had boldly charged her with slandering a woman whom she had never seen, and of whose antecedents she knew absolutely nothing. Verily, it is difficult, indeed, even for "the elect" to keep themselves "unspotted from the world;" and Zimmerman was a seer when he declared, "Who lives with wolves must join in their howls." Absorbed by professional engagements, or fiscal cares, the gentlemen of a community are rarely interested in or informed of the last wreck of character which the whirlpool of scandal strews on the strand of society; but vague rumors relative to Mrs. Gerome's isolation had penetrated even into the quiet precincts of Dr. Grey's sanctum, and consequently invested his present mission with extraneous interest.