there were times, too, when she was very silent and sad.  She had been very happy and the great catastrophe had overtaken her suddenly, leaving her absolutely without friends.  She wanted to be hidden from the world, and by one of those strange contrasts often found in weak people she had suddenly made a very bold resolution and had successfully carried it out.  She had come straight to a man she had never seen, but whom she knew very well by reputation, and had told him her story and asked him to help her; and she had not come in vain.  The person who advised her to go to the Reverend Augustin Ambrose knew that there was not a better man to whom she could apply.  She had found what she wanted, a sort of deserted village where she would never be obliged to meet any one, since there was absolutely no society; she had found a good man upon whom she felt she could rely in case of further difficulty; and she had not come upon false pretences, for she had told her whole story quite frankly.  For a woman who was naturally timid she had done a thing requiring considerable courage, and she was astonished at her own boldness after she had done it.  But in her peaceful retreat, she reflected that she could not possibly have left England, as many women in her position would have done, simply because the idea of exile was intolerable to her; she reflected also that if she had settled in any place where there was any sort of society her story would one day have become known, and that if she had spent years in studying her situation she could not have done better than in going boldly to the vicar of Billingsfield and explaining her sad position to him.  She had found a haven of rest after many months of terrible anxiety and she hoped that she might end her days in peace and in the spot she had chosen.  But she was very young—­not thirty years of age yet—­and her little girl would soon grow up—­and then?  Evidently her dream of peace was likely to be of limited duration; but she resigned herself to the unpleasant possibilities of the future with a good grace, in consideration of the advantages she enjoyed in the present.

Mrs. Ambrose was at home when Mrs. Goddard and little Eleanor came to the vicarage.  Indeed Mrs. Ambrose was rarely out in the afternoon, unless something very unusual called her away.  She received her visitor with the stern hospitality she exercised towards strangers.  The strangers she saw were generally the near relations of the young gentlemen whom her husband received for educational purposes.  She stood in the front drawing-room, that is to say, in the most impressive chamber of that fortress which is an Englishman’s house.  It was a formal room, arranged by a fixed rule and the order of it was maintained inflexibly; no event could be imagined of such terrible power as to have caused the displacement of one of those chairs, of one of those ornaments upon the chimney-piece, of one of those engravings upon the walls.  The walls were papered with one