It was probably not without a certain amount of consideration and circumspection that John Calverley had fixed upon Hendon as the place in which to establish his second home, to which to take the pretty trusting girl who believed herself to be his wife. It was a locality in which she could live retired, and in which there was very little chance of his being recognised. It offered no advantages to gentlemen engaged in the City--it was not accessible by either boat, 'bus, or rail; the pony-carriages of the inhabitants were for the most part confined to a radius of four miles in their journeys, and Davis's coach and the carrier's wagon were the sole means of communication with the metropolis.  
Also, in his quiet, undemonstrative way, Mr. Calverley had taken occasion to make himself acquainted with the names, social position, and antecedents of all the inhabitants, and to ascertain the chances of their ever having seen or heard of him, which he found on inquiry were very remote. They were for the most part Hendon born and bred, and the few settlers amongst them were retired tradesmen, who had some connection with the place, and who were not likely, from the nature of the business they had pursued while engaged in commerce, to have become acquainted with the person, or even to have heard the name of the head of the firm in Mincing-lane. About the doctor and the clergyman, as being the persons with whom he would most likely be brought into contact, he was specially curious. But his anxiety was appeased on learning that Mr. Broadbent was of a Devonshire family, and had practised in the neighbourhood of Tavistock previous to his purchase of old Doctor Fleeme's practice; while the vicar, Mr. Tomlinson, after leaving Oxford, had gone to a curacy near Durham, whence he had been transferred to Hendon.
 
So, when he had decided upon the house, and Alice had taken possession of it, John Calverley congratulated himself on having settled her down in a place where not merely he was unknown, but where the spirit of inquisitiveness was unknown also. He heard of no gossiping, no inquiries as to who they were, or where they had come from. Comments, indeed, upon the disparity of years between the married couple reached his ears; but that he was prepared for, and did not mind, so long as Alice was loving and true to him. What cared he how often the world called him old, and wondered at her choice?
 
It must be confessed that concerning the amount of gossip talked about him and his household, John Calverley was very much deceived. The people of Hendon was not different from the people of any other place, and though they lived remote from the world, they were just as fond of talking about the affairs of their neighbours as fashionable women round the tea-table in their boudoirs, or fashionable men in the smoking-room of their clubs. They discussed Mrs. A.'s tantrums and Mrs. B.'s stinginess, the doctor's wife's jealousy, and the parson's wife's airs; all each others' shortcomings were regularly gone through, and it was not likely that the household at Rose Cottage would be suffered to escape. On the contrary, it was a standing topic, and a theme for infinite discussion. Not that there was the smallest doubt amongst the neighbours as to the propriety of Alice's conduct, or the least question about her being the old gentleman's wife, but the mere fact of Mr. Claxton's being an old gentleman, and having such a young and pretty wife, excited a vast amount of talk; and when it was found that Mr. Claxton's business caused him to be constantly absent from home, there was no end to the speculation as to what that absence might not give rise. There seemed to be some sort of notion among the inhabitants that Alice would some day be carried bodily away, and many an innocent artist with his sketch-book in his breast-pocket, looking about him in search of a subject, has been put down by Miss M'Craw and her friends as a dangerous character, full of desperate designs upon Mr. Claxton's domestic happiness.
 
Miss M'Craw was a lady who took great interest in her neighbours' affairs, having but few of her own to attend to, and being naturally of an excitable and inquiring disposition, she had made many advances towards Alice, which had not been very warmly reciprocated, and the consequence was that Miss M'Craw devoted a large portion of her time to espionage over the Rose Cottage establishment, and to commenting on what she gleaned in a very vicious spirit. Early in the year in which the village was startled by the news of Mr. Claxton's death, Miss M'Craw was entertaining two or three of her special friends at tea in her little parlour, from the window of which she could command a distant view of the Rose Cottage garden gate, when the conversation, which had been somewhat flagging, happened to turn upon Alice, and thenceforth was carried on briskly.
 
'Now, my dear,' said Miss M'Craw, in pursuance of an observation she had previously made, 'we shall see whether he comes back again to-day. This is Wednesday, is it not? Well, he has been here for the last three Wednesdays, always just about the same time, between six and seven o'clock, and always doing the same thing.'
 
'Who is he? and what is it all about, Martha?' asked Mrs. Gannup, who had only just arrived, and who had been going through the ceremony known as 'taking off her things' in the little back parlour, while the previous conversation had been carried on.
 
'O, you were not here, Mrs. Gannup, and didn't hear what I said,' said Miss M'Craw. 'I was mentioning to these ladies that for the last three Wednesdays there has come a strange gentleman to our village, quite a gentleman too, riding on horseback, and with a groom behind him, well-dressed, and really,' added Miss M'Craw, with a simper, 'quite good-looking!'
 
She was the youngest of the party, being not more than forty-three years old, and in virtue of her youth was occasionally given to giggling and blushing in an innocent and playful manner.
 
'Never mind his good looks, Martha,' said one of the ladies, in an admonitory tone, 'tell Mrs. Gannup what you saw him do.'
 
'Always the same,' said Miss M'Craw. 'He always leaves the groom at some distance behind him, and rides up by the side of the Claxtons' hedge, and sits on his horse staring over into their garden. If you wind up that old music-stool to the top of its screw,' continued the innocent damsel, 'and put it into that corner of the window, and move the bird-cage, by climbing on to it you can see a bit of the Claxtons' lawn; and each time that I have seen this gentleman coming up the hill I have put the stool like that and looked out. Twice Mrs. Claxton was on the lawn, but directly she saw the man staring at her she ran into the house.'
 
'Who,' said Mrs. Gannup, 'who is she that she should not be looked at as well as anybody else? I hate such mock modesty!'
 
'And what I was saying before you came in, dear,' cried Miss M'Craw, who fully agreed with the sentiment just enunciated, 'was, that this being Wednesday, perhaps he will come again to-day. I fixed our little meeting for to-night, in order that you might all be here to see him in case he should come. It is strange, to say the least of it, that a young man should come for three weeks running and stare in at a garden belonging to people whom he does not know, at least, whom I suppose he does not know, for he has never made an attempt to go to the front gate to be let in.'
 
'There is something about these Claxtons--' said Mrs. Gannup.
 
And the worthy lady was not permitted to finish her sentence, for Miss M'Craw, springing up from her chair, cried, 'There he is again, I declare, and punctual to the time I told you. Now bring the music-stool, quick!'
 
Her visitors crowded round the window, and saw a tall man with a long fair beard ride up to the hedge of the Claxtons' garden, as had been described by Miss M'Craw, rein-in his horse, and stand up in his stirrups to look over the hedge.
 
So far the programme had been carried out exactly, to the intense delight of the on-lookers.
 
'Tell us,' cried Mrs. Gannup to Miss M'Craw, who was mounted on a music-stool, 'tell us, is she in the garden?'
 
'She! No,' cried Miss M'Craw, from her coigne of vantage, 'she is not, but he is. Mr. Claxton is walking up and down the lawn with his hands behind his back, and directly the man on horseback saw him he ducked down. See, he is off already!'
 
And as she spoke the rider turned his horse's head, and, followed by his groom, cantered slowly away.
 
When he had gone for about a mile he reduced his horse's pace to a walk, and sitting back in his saddle, indulged in a low, noiseless, chuckling laugh.
 
'It was John Calverley; no doubt about that,' he said to himself. 'I thought it was he a fortnight ago, but this time I am sure of it. Fancy that sedate old fellow, so highly thought of in the City, one of the pillars of British commerce, as they call him, spending his spare time in that pretty box with that lovely creature. From the glance I had of her at the window just now she seems as bewitching as ever. What a life for her, to be relegated to the society of an old fogey like that!--old enough to be her father, at the very least, and knowing nothing except about subjects in which she can scarcely be expected to take much interest. Not much even of that society, I should say; for old Calverley still continues to live with his wife in Walpole-street, and can only come out here occasionally, of course. What a dull time she must have of it, this pretty bird! how she must long for some companionship! for instance, that of a man more of her own age, who has travelled, and who knows the world, and can amuse her, and treat her as she ought to be treated.'
 
Thus communing with himself, the good-looking, light-bearded gentleman rode on towards London, crossing the top of Hampstead Heath, and making his way by a narrow path, little frequented, but apparently well known to him, into the Finchley-road. There, close by the Swiss Cottage, he was joined by another equestrian; a gentleman equally well mounted and almost equally good-looking. This gentleman stared very much as he saw the first-named rider pass by the end of the side-road up which he was passing, and sticking spurs into his horse quickly came up with him.
 
'My dear Wetter,' he cried, after they had exchanged salutations, 'what an extraordinary fellow you are! You have still got the chestnut thoroughbred, I see; do you continue to like him?'
 
'I still have the chestnut thoroughbred, and I continue to like him,' said Mr. Wetter with a smile, 'though why I am an extraordinary fellow for that I am at a loss to perceive.'
 
'Not for that, of course,' said his friend; 'that was merely said par parenthèse. You are an extraordinary fellow because one never sees you in the Park, or in any place of that sort, and because one finds you riding alone here, evidently on your way back from some outlandish place in the north-west. After grinding away in the City, and wearying your brain, as you must do, with your enormous business, one would think you would like a little relaxation.'
 
'It is precisely because I do grind away all the day in the City, I do weary my brain, I do want a little relaxation, that you do not see me in the Park, where I should have to ride up and down that ghastly Row, and talk nonsense to the fribbles and the fools I meet there.............