Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was “very easy in her manners.”  This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment.  She liked a certain stiffness in strangers.  It was not, however, in Isabel Strange’s nature to oblige her in that particular.  Her way of pouring her grace into Mrs. Moggridge’s great arm-chair suggested at once that she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she chatted as with an old acquaintance.  You could not make a stranger of her.  She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and watched her.

“That’s an interesting face!” she said presently, pointing to a conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece.

“That’s Mr. Londonderry,” said Mr. Moggridge.

“O! that’s Mr. Londonderry, is it?” she said.  “H’m,...  I hadn’t expected him to be so young.”

“Yes!  He’s a wonderful young man for his position,” said Mr. Moggridge, started on what was now his favourite topic.  “He’ll be a great man some day, will Mr. Londonderry.”

Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest.  Such a genuine interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him.

Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present prosperity.

“Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, wasn’t it, missus?” turning to his wife; “but now, since Mr. Londonderry came, there is always something moving.  Yes, there’s always something going on at New Zion,” he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully.  Mr. Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.

Mr. Moggridge also told the story of “The Dawn,” and generally, as he would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion.  At the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of the world,—­perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.

Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very young woman.  That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her features for a long time to come.  A face so full of the mystery of light could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic eyes would shine through the cold closed lids.