d
repaired to execute a commission for his mother, had heard her business,
and had been so struck by the notion--or by a desire to ingratiate
himself with Miss Bewery--that he had immediately bought flowers
himself--to be put down to her account--and insisted on accompanying
Mary to the churchyard.

Bryce heard of this tribute to John Braden next day--from Mrs. Folliot,
Sackville Bonham's mother, a large lady who dominated certain circles
of Wrychester society in several senses. Mrs. Folliot was one of those
women who have been gifted by nature with capacity--she was conspicuous
in many ways. Her voice was masculine; she stood nearly six feet in her
stoutly-soled shoes; her breadth corresponded to her height; her eyes
were piercing, her nose Roman; there was not a curate in Wrychester
who was not under her thumb, and if the Dean himself saw her coming, he
turned hastily into the nearest shop, sweating with fear lest she should
follow him. Endued with riches and fortified by assurance, Mrs. Folliot
was the presiding spirit in many movements of charity and benevolence;
there were people in Wrychester who were unkind enough to say--behind
her back--that she was as meddlesome as she was most undoubtedly
autocratic, but, as one of her staunchest clerical defenders once
pointed out, these grumblers were what might be contemptuously dismissed
as five-shilling subscribers. Mrs. Folliot, in her way, was undoubtedly
a power--and for reasons of his own Pemberton Bryce, whenever he met
her--which was fairly often--was invariably suave and polite.

"Most mysterious thing, this, Dr. Bryce," remarked Mrs. Folliot in her
deepest tones, encountering Bryce, the day after the funeral, at the
corner of a back street down which she was about to sail on one of her
charitable missions, to the terror of any of the women who happened to
be caught gossiping. "What, now, should make Dr. Ransford cause flowers
to be laid on the grave of a total stranger? A sentimental feeling?
Fiddle-de-dee! There must be some reason."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. Folliot,"
answered Bryce, whose ears had already lengthened. "Has Dr. Ransford
been laying flowers on a grave?--I didn't know of it. My engagement with
Dr. Ransford terminated two days ago--so I've seen nothing of him."

"My son, Mr. Sackville Bonham," said Mrs. Folliot, "tells me
that yesterday Miss Bewery came into Gardales' and spent a
sovereign--actually a sovereign!-