The door leading into the back parlour opened, and a little girl about nine or ten years old entered.

"Mother, I want--"

Mrs. Fairfax, without saying a word, gently led the child into the parlour again.

"Dear me, what a pretty little girl! Is that yours?"

"Yes, she is mine."

Mrs. Bingham noticed that Mrs. Fairfax did not wear a widow's cap, and that she had a wedding-ring on her finger.

"You will find it rather lonely here. Have you been accustomed to solitude?"

"Yes. That silk, now, would suit you admirably. With less ornament it would be ten guineas."

"Thank you: I must not be so extravagant at present. May I look at something which will do for walking? You would not, I suppose, make a walking-dress for Langborough exactly as you would have made it in London?"

"If you mean for walking about the roads here, it would differ slightly from one which would be suitable for London."

"Will you show me what you have usually made for town?"

"This is what is worn now."

Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated. She gave an order for a walking-dress, and hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be more communicative.

"Have you any introductions here?"

"None whatever."

"It is rather a risk if you are unknown."

"Perhaps you have been exempt from risks: some people are obliged constantly to encounter them."

"'Exempt,' 'encounter,"' thought Mrs. Bingham: "she must have been to a good school."

"When will you be ready to try on?"

"On Friday," and Mrs. Fairfax opened the door.

As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a French book lying on a side table.

The day following was Sunday, and Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter were at church. They sat at the back, and all the congregation turned on entering, looked at them, and thought about them during the service.

They went out as soon as it was over, but Mrs. Harrop, wife of the ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, wife of the coal merchant, escaped with equal prompt.i.tude and were close behind them.

"There isn't a crease in that body," said Mrs. Harrop.

On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the post-office. She took care to be there at the dinner hour, when the postmaster's wife generally came to the counter.

"A newcomer, Mrs. Carter. Have you seen Mrs. Fairfax?"

"Once or twice, ma'am."

"Has she many letters?"

The door between the office and the parlour was open.

"I've no doubt she will have, ma'am, if her business succeeds."

"I wonder where she lived before she came here. It is curious, isn't it, that n.o.body knows her? Did you ever notice how her letters are stamped?"

"Can't say as I have, ma'am."

Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. "The smell of those onions," she whispered to her husband, "blows right in here." She then altered her tone a trifle.

"One of 'em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth postmark on it; but this is in the strictest confidence, and I should never dream of letting it out to anybody but you, but I don't mind you, because I know you won't repeat it, and if my husband was to hear me he'd be in a fearful rage, for there was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline at Thaxton Manor about the letters Miss Margaret was getting, and it was found out that it was me as told her, and some gentleman in London wrote to the Postmaster-General about it."

"You may depend upon me, Mrs. Carter." Mrs. Bingham considered she had completely satisfied her conscience when she imposed an oath of secrecy on Mrs. Harrop, who was also self-exonerated when she had imposed a similar oath on Mrs. Cobb.

A fortnight after the visit to the post-office there was a tea-party.

Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, the grocer's wife, and Miss Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on a small annuity, but most genteel, were invited to Mrs. Bingham's. They began to talk of Mrs. Fairfax directly they had tasted the hot b.u.t.tered toast. They had before them the following facts: the carrier's deposition that the goods came from Great Ormond Street; the lay-figure and what it wore; Mrs. Fairfax's prices; the little girl; the wedding-ring but no widow's weeds; the Portsmouth postmark; the French book; Mrs. Bingham's new gown, and lastly--a piece of information contributed by Mrs. Sweeting and considered to be of great importance, as we shall see presently--that Mrs. Fairfax bought her coffee whole and ground it herself. On these facts, nine in all, the ladies had to construct--it was imperative that they should construct it--an explanation of Mrs. Fairfax, and it must be confessed that they were not worse equipped than many a picturesque and successful historian. At the request of the company, Mrs. Bingham went upstairs and put on the gown.

"Do you mind coming to the window, Mrs. Bingham?" asked Mrs. Harrop.

Mrs. Bingham rose and went to the window. Her guests also rose. She held her arms down and then held them up, and was surveyed from every point of the compa.s.s.

"I thought it was a pucker, but it's only the shadow," observed Mrs.

Harrop.

Mrs. Cobb stroked the body and shook the skirt. Not a single depreciatory criticism was ventured. Excepting the wearer, n.o.body present had seen such a masterpiece. But although for half a lifetime we may have beheld nothing better than an imperfect actual, we recognise instantly the superiority and glory of the realised Ideal when it is presented to us. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, and Miss Tarrant became suddenly aware of possibilities of which they had not hitherto dreamed. Mrs. Swanley, the linendraper's wife, was degraded and deposed.

"She must have learned that in London," said Mrs. Harrop.

"London! my dear Mrs. Harrop," replied Mrs. Bingham, "I know London pretty well, and how things are cut there. I told you there was a French book on the table. Take my word for it, she has lived in Paris.

She MUST have lived there."

"Where is Great Ormond Street, Mrs. Bingham?" inquired Mrs. Sweeting.

"A great many foreigners live there; it is somewhere near Leicester Square."

Mrs. Bingham knew nothing about the street, but having just concluded a residence in Paris from the French book, that conclusion led at once to a further conclusion, clear as noonday, as to the quality of the people who inhabited Great Ormond Street, and consequently to the final deduction of its locality.

"Did you not say, Mrs. Sweeting, that she buys her coffee whole?" added Mrs. Bingham, as if inspiration had flashed into her. "If you want additional proof that she is French, there it is."

"Portsmouth," mused Mrs. Cobb. "You say, Mrs. Bingham, there are a good many officers there. Let me see--1815--it's twenty-four years ago since the battle. A captain may have picked her up in Paris. I'll be bound that, if she ever was married, she was married when she was sixteen or seventeen. They are always obliged to marry those French girls when they are nothing but chits, I've been told--those of them, least-ways, that don't live with men without being married. That would make her about forty, and then he found her out and left her, and she went back to Paris and learned dressmaking."

"But he writes to her from Portsmouth," said Mrs. Bingham, who had not been told that the solitary letter from Portsmouth was addressed in a man's handwriting.

"He may not have broken with her altogether," replied Mrs. Cobb. "If he isn't a downright brute he'll want to hear about his daughter."