natural element than the long
grey cloak was a natural garment for that spotless, dove-coloured woman.
Her eyes turned wistfully after the stranger with suppressed impulses
of gentle curiosity and gossip. She knew very well he did not belong to
Carlingford. She knew nobody in Grange Lane or the neighbourhood to
whom he could belong. She wanted very much to stop and inquire at the
stable-boy of the Blue Boar, their own gardener's son, who and what this
new-comer was, and turned back to look after him before she turned out
of George Street following Lucy, with lively anxiety to know whether he
was going to St Roque's. Perhaps the labours of a sisterhood of mercy
require a special organisation even of the kind female soul. Miss
Wodehouse, the most tender-hearted of human creatures, did not rise to
that development; and, with a little pang of unsatisfied wonder, saw the
unaccustomed Hercules disappear in the distance without being able to
make out whither he was bound.

Nobody, however, who had been privileged to share the advantages of Mrs
Fred Rider's conversation for some time back, could be at a loss to guess
who this messenger from the wilderness was. It was Richard Chatham come
at last--he with whose name Nettie had been bored and punctured through
and through from the first day of his introduction into Susan's talk till
now. Mrs Fred had used largely in the interval that all-potent torture
of the "continual dropping;"--used it so perpetually as, though without
producing any visible effect upon Nettie's resolution, to introduce
often a certain sickness and disgust with everything into that steadfast
soul. Nor did she content herself with her own exertions, but skilfully
managed to introduce the idea into the minds of the children--ready, as
all children are, for change and novelty. Nettie had led a hard enough
life for these three months. She could not meet Edward Rider, nor he
her, with a calm pretence of friendship; and Susan, always insolent and
spiteful, and now mistress of the position, filled the doctor with an
amount of angry irritation which his longings for Nettie's society could
not quite subdue. That perpetual barrier between them dismayed both.
Meetings which always ended in pain were best avoided, except at those
intervals when longing love could not, even under that penalty, refuse
itself the gratification; but the dismal life which was lighted up
only by those unfrequent, agitating, exasperating encounte