The girl was looking more beautiful than ever, and there was a tell-
tale colour in her cheeks and an unusual light in her soft grey
eyes. As for Zaluski, he was so evidently in love, and had the
audacity to look so supremely happy, that Mrs. Milton-Cleave was
more than ever impressed with the gravity of the situation. The
curate handed her into her victoria, and she drove home through the
sheltered lanes musing sadly over the story she had heard, and
wondering what Gertrude's future would be. When she reached home,
however, the affair was driven from her thoughts by her children, of
whom she was devotedly fond. They came running to meet her,
frisking like so many kittens round her as she went upstairs to her
room, and begging to stay with her while she dressed for dinner.
During dinner she was engrossed with her husband; but afterwards,
when she was alone in the drawing-room, I found my opportunity for
working on her restless mind.

"Dear me," she exclaimed, throwing aside the newspaper she had just
taken up, "I ought to write to Mrs. Selldon at Dulminster about that
G.F.S. girl!"

As a matter of fact she ought not to have written then, the letter
might well have waited till the morning, and she was over-tired and
needed rest. But I was glad to see her take up her pen, for I knew
I should come in most conveniently to fill up the second side of the
sheet.

Before long Jane Stiggins, the member who had migrated from
Muddleton to Dulminster, had been duly reported, wound up, and made
over to the Archdeacon's wife. Then the tired hand paused. What
more could she say to her friend?