“Alice is up in her chamber lying down, Anna dear,” Miss Penny informed her. “She may be asleep, but you are so quiet you may steal up to see if you like.” Anna gazed enquiringly at Mrs. Lorraine, who begged her to sit down. “Have you noticed anything strange about Alice lately, Anna?” she asked in a troubled voice. “Why Mrs. Lorraine, now you speak of it--Alice does seem--nervous,” the girl admitted. “She does. Decidedly. I cannot understand it. She gets wrought up over such trifles. You saw how it was last night about giving up the cottage? And to-day she wanted to rush off the minute dinner was over to look for the key she lost. She seemed all used up over it. I told her Mr. Clarke very likely had others, and that anyhow it wasn’t such a serious matter as she made it to lose a key in a quiet community like this, but she was too excited to be reasonable. Finally, I persuaded her to go up and lie down and put this off until to-morrow, but I feel worn out myself from the struggle.” “You don’t think the work she does here is tiring her?” asked Miss Penny anxiously. “She did more at the cottage, and besides of late she hardly does anything,” said Mrs. Lorraine. “Alice is high-strung and goes into things too intensely,” remarked Miss Penny. “She took to going off for long walks when you were away, Anna, and I think she overdid. I don’t think she went so far as going to the cemetery as you did; but she seems to have become interested in old-time things and people--antiquities and relics--not relicts,--and yet, I don’t know--there’s Enoch Arden, you know.” “Enoch Arden!” cried Anna aghast. Miss Penny smiled. “My dear, my head is all right,--as good, that is to say, as it ever was. I was simply--but naturally you didn’t see the point. One night some time ago--it was, O, a month ago, I should say, though it might not have been, Alice read Enoch Arden aloud to her mother and me. We all talked about it afterwards but Alice couldn’t seem to get through. She kept questioning me. She wanted to find out whether it could be true--here, for instance, right here in this village. She started me to thinking of the different widows, you know, and whether any husbands had left Farleigh and never come back. Reuben’s father wasn’t exactly a husband, you know, though he went away and never returned. But he was a widower. And his wife even if she had been alive would never have married again. And if she had, it wouldn’t have been Enoch Arden, for he was killed in a wreck--that’s more certain than being lost at sea.” “But--Enoch Arden?” asked Anna still perplexed. “That’s just it. That’s why it took so long to get through--if we ever got through? Alice would get me started and then I would be reminded of something else and lose the point. There are so many different stories connected with everyone, you see. And yet, I don’t know that anyone in Farleigh ever had so many stories that could be told at his age as Reuben has.”