o myself, may be she fancies I don't like her for a lodger;
so I just said, in an easy kind of manner, 'Well, Ma'am, and I
hope, when the six months are past, that you may take them on
for another half-year.' But 'No,' says she; 'six months will
do,' which, to be sure, was a natural thing enough for her to
say; but I take it, that if you had been there, Sir, and had
heard her say it, you would not have thought it quite natural
either."

"Is this lady whom you are speaking of in deep mourning? and
does she occasionally attend the cathedral service?"

"She does. Sir; and is always dressed in black. She sits near
the pillar where Mrs. Jones used to sit, poor soul, when she
was alive."

"I have remarked her; she does indeed look both ill and
unhappy. Do you know anything of her history?"

"Not a word, Sir; she wears a wedding-ring, but her clothes
are marked with an E. and an M., for all that she calls
herself Mrs. Rodney."

"Does she ever enter into conversation with you?"

"Sometimes, a little. Last week, Joe Irving, the undergardener
at Clomley lodge, brought me, as a present, a large nosegay of
dahlias and china-asters. I carried them upstairs, and while
Mrs. Rodney was in church, I put them into jars, on the table,
and on the chimney-piece, and very bright and pretty they
looked. So when she came in, she noticed them and thanked me,
and spoke quite cheerful. As she was standing a-talking to me
about them, an insect ran out from between the leaves, and I
tried to kill it, but she caught my hand and stopped me; and
_her_ hand, Sir!--why it was more like one of those bits of
hot coal there, than the little white soil thing it looked
like, and when I looked at her face, there was a bright fever
spot on each cheek, and her lips were as white as could be.

"'You are very ill. Ma'am,' says I to her; 'your hand is
burning-hot.' She put it to her forehead and 'it does not feel
hot to me,' says she, and walks away to the window and opens
it, for all that it was almost as cold and raw as to-night.
But, now, and that's what I'm come about. Sir, she has taken
to her bed, and is in a very bad way indeed, I take it."

"What! and has not she seen the doctor?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Lacy; she won't as much as let him come into
the house. When she found herself so ill, that she could not
do for herself, she sent me to get one of the hospital nurses;
and as Mary Evans was to be had, the girl that you was so good
to last year wh