It was a warm and sunny day in Dallory. Mrs. Gass threw open her window and sat behind the geraniums enjoying the sunshine, exchanging salutations and gossip with as many of her acquaintances as happened to pass her windows.

"How d\'ye do, doctor? Isn\'t this a lovely day?"

It was Dr. Rane who was hurrying past now. He turned for an instant to the window, his brow clearing. For some time now a curious look of care and perplexity had sat upon it.

"Indeed it is," he answered. "I hope it will last. Are you pretty well, Mrs. Gass?"

"I\'m first-rate," said that lady. "A fine day, with the wind in the north, always sets me up. Doctor, have they paid you the tontine money yet?"

"No," said Dr. Rane, somewhat angrily. "There are all sorts of forms to be gone through, apparently; and the Brothers Ticknell do not hurry for any one. The two old men are past business, in my opinion. They were always slow and tiresome; it is something more than that now."

"Do you stir \'em well up?" questioned Mrs. Gass.

"When I have the chance of doing it; but that\'s very rarely. Go when I will, I can scarcely ever see any one except the confidential clerk, old Latham; and he is as slow and methodical as his master. I suppose the money will come sometime, but I am tired of waiting for it."

"And what about your plans when you get it, doctor? Are they all cut and dried?"

"Time enough to decide on them when I do get the money," replied the doctor, shortly.

"But you still intend to leave Dallory Ham?"

"Oh yes, I shall do that."

"You won\'t be going to America?"

"I think I shall. It is more than likely."

"Well, I wouldn\'t banish myself from my native country for the best practice that ever shoes dropped into. You might be getting nothing but Red Indians for patients."

Dr. Rane laughed a little; and there was an eager sort of light in his eyes that seemed to speak of anticipation and hope. Only he knew how thankful he would be to get to another country and find himself clear of this.

"I wonder," soliloquized Mrs. Gass, as he walked on his way, "whether it is all straight-for\'ard about that tontine money? Have the Ticknells heard any of these ugly rumours that\'s flying about; and are they keeping it back in consequence? If not, why it ought to have been paid over to him before this. The delay is odd--say the least of it. How d\'ye do, sir? A nice day."

A gentleman, passing, had raised his hat to Mrs. Gass. She resumed her reflections.

"The rumours be spreading wider and getting uglier. They\'ll go up presently, like a bomb-shell. I\'m heartily sorry for him; for I don\'t believe--no, I don\'t--that he\'d do such a frightful thing. If it should turn out that he did--why, then I shall blame myself ever after for having procrastinated my intentions."

Mrs. Gass paused, and began to go over those intentions, with a view, possibly, to seeing whether she was very much to blame.

"Finding Oliver and his wife couldn\'t get the tontine money paid to them--and a hard case it was!--I had it in my mind to say, \'I\'ll advance it to you. You\'ll both be the better for something in my will when I\'m gone--the doctor being my late husband\'s own nephew, and the nearest relation left of him--and if two thousand pounds of it will be of real good to you now, you shall have it. But I didn\'t say it at once--who was to suppose there was such need for hurry--and then she died. If the man\'s innocent--and I believe he is--that Jelly ought to have her mouth sewn up for good. She---- Why, there you are! Talk of the dickens and he\'s sure to appear."

"Were you talking of me?" asked Jelly: for Mrs. Gass had raised her voice with surprise and brought it within Jelly\'s hearing. She carried a small basket on her arm, under her black shawl, and turned to the window.

"I was thinking of you," responded Mrs. Gass. "Be you come out marketing?"

"I\'m taking a few scraps to Ketler\'s," replied Jelly, just showing the basket. "My mistress has given me general leave to give them any trifles not likely to be wanted at home. The cook\'s good-natured too. This is a jar of dripping, and some bones and bread."

"And how do you like the Beverages, Jelly?"

"Oh, very well. They are good ladies; but so serious and particular."

Mrs. Gass rose from her seat, pushed the geraniums aside, and leaning her arms upon the window-sill, brought her good-natured red face very near to Jelly\'s bonnet.

"I\'ll tell you what I was thinking of, girl: it was about these awful whispers that\'s flying round. Go where you will, you may hear \'em. Within dwelling-houses or at street corners, people\'s tongues are cackling secretly about Dr. Rane\'s wife, and asking what she died of. I knew it would be so, Jelly."

Jelly turned a little paler. "They\'ll die away again, perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps," repeated Mrs. Gass, sarcastically. "It\'s to be hoped they will, for your sake. Jelly, I wouldn\'t stand in your shoes to be made a queen tomorrow."

"I wouldn\'t stand in somebody else\'s," returned Jelly, irritated into the avowal. "I shall have pretty good proof at hand, if I\'m forced to bring it out."

"What proof?"

"Well, I\'d rather not say. You\'d only ridicule it, Mrs. Gass, and blow me up into the bargain. I must be going."

"I guess it\'s moonshine, Jelly--like the ghost you saw. Good-morning."

Jelly went away with a hard and anything but a happy look, and Mrs. Gass resumed her seat again. Very shortly there came creeping by, following the same direction as Jelly, a poor shivering woman, with a ragged shawl on her thin shoulders, and a white, pinched, hopeless face.

"Is that you, Susan Ketler?"

Susan Ketler turned and dropped a curtsy. Some of the women of North Inlet were even worse off than she was. She did have help now and then from Jelly.

"Yes, ma\'am, it\'s me."

"How long do you think you North Inlet people will be able to keep going--as things be at present?" demanded Mrs. Gass.

"The Lord above only knows," said the woman, looking upwards with a pitiful shiver. "Here\'s the winter a-coming on."

"What does Ketler think of affairs now?"

Ketler\'s wife shook her head. The men were not fond of disclosing what they might think, unless it was to one another. Ketler had never told her what he thought.

"Is he still in love with the Trades\' unions, and what they\'ve done for him? My opinion is this, Susan Ketler," continued Mrs. Gass, after a pause: "that in every place where distress reigns, as it does here, and where it can be proved that the men have lost their work through the dictates of the society, the parish ought to go upon the society and make it keep the men and the families. If a law was passed to that effect, we should hear less of the doings of the Trades\' union people than we do now. They\'d draw in a bit, Susan; they\'d not give the gaping public quite so many of their procession-shows, and their flags, and their speeches. It would be a downright good law to make, mind you. A just one, too. If the society forbids men to work, and so takes the bread necessary for life out of their mouths, it is only fair they should find them bread to replace it."

An almost hopeful look came into the woman\'s eyes. "Ma\'am, I said as good as this to Ketler only yesterday. Seeing that it was the society that had took the bread from us, and that the consequences had been bad instead of good, for we were starving, the society ought to put us into work again. It might bestir itself to do that: or else support us while we got into something."

Mrs. Gass smiled pityingly. "You must be credulous, Susan Ketler, to fancy the society can put \'em into work again. Where\'s the work to come from? Well, it\'s not your fault, my poor woman, and there\'s more people than me sorry for you all. And now, tell me," Mrs. Gass lowered her voice, "be any of the men talking treason still? You know what I mean."

Mrs. Ketler glanced over both her shoulders to see that no one was within hearing, before she whispered in answer.

"They be always a-talking it. I can see it in their faces as they stand together. Not Ketler, ma\'am; he\'d stop it if he could: he don\'t wish harm to none."

"Ah. I wish to goodness they\'d all betake themselves off from the place. Though it\'s hard to say so, for there\'s no other open to them that I see. Well, you go on home, Susan. Jelly has just gone there with a basket of scraps for you. Stay a minute, though."

Mrs. Gass quitted the room, calling to one of her servants. When she returned she produced a half-pint physic bottle corked up.

"It\'s a drop of beer," she said. "For yourself, mind, not for Ketler. You want it, I know. Put it under your shawl. It will help down Jelly\'s scraps."

The woman went away with grateful tears in her eyes. And Mrs. Gass sat on and enjoyed the sunshine. Just then Mary Dallory came by in her little low pony-carriage. She often drove about in it alone. Seeing Mrs. Gass, she drew up. That lady, without any ceremony, went out in her cap and stood talking.

"I hear you have left the Hall, my dear," she said, when the gossip was coming to an end.

"Ages ago," replied Miss Dallory. "Frank is at home again, and wanted me."

"How did you enjoy your visit on the whole?"

"Pretty well. It was not very lively, especially after Sir Nash was taken ill."

"He is better, Mr. Richard tells me," said the elder lady.

"Yes; he sits up now. I went to see him yesterday."

"Captain Bohun looks but poorly still."

"His illness was a bad one. Fancy his having jaundice. I thought it was only old people who had that."

"My dear, it attacks young and old. Once the liver gets out of order, there\'s no telling. Captain Bohun was born in India; and they are more liable to liver complaint, it\'s said, than others. You are driving alone to-day, as usual," continued Mrs. Gass.

"I like to be independent. Frank won\'t show himself in this little chaise; he says it is no better than a respectable wheelbarrow; and I\'m sure I am not going to be troubled with a groom at my side."

"If all tales told are true, you\'ll soon run a chance of losing your independence," rejoined Mrs. Gass. "People say a certain young lady, not a hundred miles at this moment from, my elbow, is likely to give her heart away."

Instead of replying, Mary Dallory blushed violently. Observant Mrs. Gass saw and noticed it.

"Then it is true!" she exclaimed.

"What\'s true?" asked Mary.

"That you are likely to be married."

"No, it is not."

"My dear, you may as well tell me. You know me well; I\'ll keep good counsel."

"But I have nothing to tell you. How can I imagine what you mean?"

"\'Twasn\'t more than a hint I had: that Captain Bohun--Sir Arthur as he will be--was making up his mind to have Miss Dallory, and she to have him. Miss Mary, is it so?"

"Did madam tell you that?"

"Madam wouldn\'t be likely to tell me--all of us in Dallory are so much dust under her feet; quite beneath being spoken to. No: \'twas her maid, Parrit, dropped it to me. She had heard it through madam, though."

Mary Dallory laughed a little and flicked the ear of the rough Welsh pony. "I fancy madam would like it," she said.

"Who wouldn\'t?" rejoined Mrs. Gass. "I put the question to Richard North--Whether there was anything in it? He answered there might be; he knew it was wished for."

"Richard North said that, did he? Of course, so it might be--and may be--for anything he can tell."

"But, my dear Miss Mary, is it so?"

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