"Yes," she assented. "I suppose the children will have the whole property, now that the old lady is gone. I hope Mr. Harrington will be satisfied. He just married that girl for her money. That, I am sure, you will hear everybody say." "Yet she is exceedingly pretty," I suggested. "Oh, yes, too pretty; she makes one think of a wax doll. But these English lords don't care for beauty without there is a deal of hard cash to back it, and if Agnes Pollard had been as poor as--what other beauty have we in town?" "There is a girl called Rhoda Colwell," I ventured. "Rhoda Colwell! Do you call her a beauty? I know some folks think she is--well, then, let us say as Rhoda Colwell, he would have made her any proposal sooner than that of his hand." "And is Mr. Harrington a lord?" I asked, feeling that I was lighting upon some very strange truths. "He is the next heir to one. A nephew I believe, or else a cousin. I cannot keep track of all those fine distinctions in people I never saw." "They were married privately and right after Mr. Pollard's death, I have heard." "Yes, and for no other earthly reason that one ever heard of than to have it settled and done; for Mr. Harrington did not take away his wife from the country; nor does he intend to as far as I can learn. Everybody thought it a very strange proceeding, and none too respectful to Mr. Pollard's memory either." I thought of all I had heard and seen in that house, and wondered. "Mr. Pollard was such a nice man, too," she pursued, in a musing tone. "Not a commanding person, like his wife, but so good and kind and attentive to poor folks like me. I never liked a man more than I did Mr. Pollard, and I have always thought that if he had had a different kind of mother for his children--but what is the use of criticising the poor woman now. She is dead and so is he, and the children will do very well now with all that money to back them in any caprice they may have." "You seem to know them well," I remarked, fearful she would observe the emotion I could not quite keep out of my face. "No," she returned, with an assumption of grimness, which was evidently meant for sarcasm, "not well. Every one knows the Pollards, but I never heard any one say they knew them well." "Didn't Mr. Barrows?" I tremblingly inquired, anxious for her reply, yet fearful of connecting those two names. "Not that I ever saw," she returned, showing no special interest in the question, or in the fact that it was seemingly of some importance to me. "Didn't they use to come here to see him?" I proceeded, emboldened by her evident lack of perspicuity. "None of them?" I added, seeing her about to shake her head. "Oh, Dwight or Guy would come here if they had any business with him," she allowed. "But that isn't intimacy; the Pollards are intimate with nobody."