, braided in the
way which had been becoming to her thirty years before. The effect, if
neat, was rather wig-like, and the one peculiar-looking thing about her
appearance. She always wore, summer and winter, a mannish-looking
tailor-made coat and skirt, and a plainly cut flannel or linen shirt. At
night--and she dressed each evening--she alternated between two black
dresses, the one a velvet dress gown, the other a sequin-covered satin
tea-gown.

Such was the woman to whom Betty Tosswill had thought it just as well to
go herself with the news of Godfrey Radmore's coming visit to Old Place,
and as she walked slowly up the village street, the girl tried to remind
herself that Miss Pendarth had a very kind side to her nature. Of all the
letters Betty had received at the time of her brother's death, she had
had none of more sincerely expressed sympathy than that from this old
friend whom she was now going to see. And yet? Yet what pain and distress
Miss Pendarth had caused them all at the time of the Rosamund trouble!
Instead of behaving like a true friend, and, as far as possible, stopping
the flow of gossip, she had added to its volume, causing the story to be
known to a far larger circle than would otherwise have been the case. But
Betty, honesty itself, was well aware that her step-mother had made a
serious mistake in not telling Miss Pendarth what there was to tell. A
confidence she never betrayed.

Betty also reminded herself ruefully that in the far-away days when
Godfrey Radmore had been so often an inmate of Old Place, there had been
something like open war between himself and Miss Pendarth, and when she
had heard of his extraordinary good fortune, she had not hidden her
regret that it had fallen on one so unworthy.

As Betty went up to the iron gate and unlatched it, she half hoped that
the owner of Rose Cottage would be out. Miss Pendarth, unlike most of her
neighbours, always kept her front door locked--you could not turn the
handle and walk right into the house.

To-day she answered Betty's ring herself, and with a smile of welcome
lighting up her rather grim face she drew the girl into the hall and
kissed her affectionately.

"I was just starting to pay my first call on Mrs. Crofton. But I'm so
glad. Perhaps you'll be able to tell me something about her. I hear she
had supper with you the day she arrived!"

As she spoke, she led the way into a little room off the hall. "I've been
trying to make out to w