suggested, the story rapidly gained ground, until at last it
reached the ear of Grace Atherton, the pretty young widow, whose
windows looked directly across the stretches of meadow and
woodland to where Collingwood lifted its single tower and its
walls of dark grey stone. As became the owner of Brier Hill and
the widow of a judge, Grace held herself somewhat above the rest
of the villagers, associating with but few, and finding her
society mostly in the city not many miles away,

When her cross, gouty, phthisicy, fidgety old husband lay sick for
three whole months, she nursed him so patiently that people
wondered if it could be she loved the SURLY DOG, and one woman,
bolder than the others, asked her if she did.

"Love him? No," she answered, "but I shall do my duty."

So when he died she made him a grand funeral, but did not pretend
that she was sorry. She was not, and the night on which she
crossed the threshold of Brier Hill a widow of twenty-one saw her
a happier woman than when she first crossed it as a bride. Such
was Grace Atherton, a proud, independent, but well principled
woman, attending strictly to her own affairs, and expecting others
to do the same. In the gossip concerning Collingwood, she had
taken no verbal part, but there was no one more deeply interested
than herself, spite of her studied indifference.

"You never knew the family," a lady caller said to her one
morning, when at a rather late hour she sat languidly sipping her
rich chocolate, and daintily picking at the snowy rolls and nicely
buttered toast, "you never knew them or you would cease to wonder