“I never thought,” said Mary, “that there could be—­any objection.”

“Oh, how can you think I mean that?—­how can you pretend to think so?” cried the other, impatiently.  “But after you have been treated so heartlessly, so unkindly,—­and left, poor thing! they tell me, without a penny, without any provision—­”

“I don’t know you,” cried Mary, breathless with quick rising passion.  “I don’t know what right you can have to meddle with my affairs.”

The lady stared at her for a moment without speaking, and then she said, all at once, “That is quite true,—­but it is rude as well; for though I have no right to meddle with your affairs, I did it in kindness, because I took an interest in you from all I have heard.”

Mary was very accessible to such a reproach and argument.  Her face flushed with a sense of her own churlishness.  “I beg your pardon,” she said; “I am sure you mean to be kind.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “that is perhaps going too far on the other side, for you can’t even see my face, to know what I mean.  But I do mean to be kind, and I am very sorry for you.  And though I think you’ve been treated abominably, all the same I like you better for not allowing any one to say so.  And now, do you know where I was going?  I was going to the vicarage,—­where you are living, I believe,—­to see if the vicar, or his wife, or you, or all of you together, could do a thing for me.”

“Oh, I am sure Mrs. Bowyer—­” said Mary, with a voice much less assured than her words.

“You must not be too sure, my dear.  I know she doesn’t mean to call upon me, because my husband is a city man.  That is just as she pleases.  I am not very fond of city men myself.  But there’s no reason why I should stand on ceremony when I want something, is there?  Now, my dear, I want to know—­Don’t laugh at me.  I am not superstitious, so far as I am aware; but—­Tell me, in your time was there ever any disturbance, any appearance you couldn’t understand, any—­Well, I don’t like the word ghost.  It’s disrespectful, if there’s anything of the sort:  and it’s vulgar if there isn’t.  But you know what I mean.  Was there anything—­of that sort—­in your time?”

In your time!  Poor Mary had scarcely realized yet that her time was over.  Her heart refused to allow it when it was thus so abruptly brought before her, but she obliged herself to subdue these rising rebellions, and to answer, though with some hauteur, “There is nothing of the kind that I ever heard of.  There is no superstition or ghost in our house.”

She thought it was the vulgar desire of new people to find a conventional mystery, and it seemed to Mary that this was a desecration of her home.  Mrs. Turner, however (for that was her name), did not receive the intimation as the girl expected, but looked at her very gravely, and said, “That makes it a great deal more serious,” as if to herself.  She paused and then added, “You see, the case