a maiden lady of uncertain age, who wore stiff bands of suspiciously
black hair under an imposing structure of lace and artificial flowers,
and a rusty black-silk dress, the body of which fitted so tightly as to
seem like a kind of armour. This lady received Mr. Fenton very
graciously, and declared herself quite ready to give him any information
in her power about Miss Nowell.

It happened unfortunately, however, that her power was of a most limited
extent.

"A sweeter young lady never lived than Miss Nowell," she said. "I've had
a great many people occupying these apartments since my father's death
left me thrown upon my own resources. I've had lodgers that I might call
permanent, in a manner of speaking; but I never had any one that I took
to as I took to Miss Nowell, though she was hardly with me three weeks
from first to last."

"Did she seem happy in her mind during that time?" Gilbert asked.

"Well, no; I cannot say that she did. I should have expected to see a
young lady that was going to be married to the man she loved much more
cheerful and hopeful about the future than Miss Nowell was. She told me
that her uncle had not been dead many weeks, and I thought at first that
this was the only grief she had on her mind; but after some time, when I
found her very low and downhearted, and had won upon her to trust me
almost as if I had been an old friend, she owned to me that she had
behaved very badly to a gentleman she had been engaged to, and that the
thought of her wickedness to him preyed upon her mind. 'I don't think any
good can ever come of my marriage, Miss Long,' she said to me; 'I think I
must surely be punished for my falsehood to the good man who loved me so