Moreover, here was a mystery connected with Nanjivell.  In the midst of her embarrassment she felt a secret assurance that she was in luck; that she held a clue; that she had in her grasp something to open Mrs Polsue’s eyes in envy.

“The first thing,” she decided, “is to take this piece of gold to the child’s mother, and instanter.”

But, as fate would have it, she had scarcely reached the porch of the Old Doctor’s house when Nicky-Nan himself emerged from it:  and at the sight of him her fatal curiosity triumphed.

“Mr Nanjivell!” she called.

Nicky-Nan turned about.  “Good mornin’, Miss.  Was that you a-callin’?”

Having yielded to her impulse, Miss Oliver suddenly found herself at a loss how to proceed.  Confusion and the call to improvise an opening movement mantled her cheeks with that crimson tint which her friend Mary-Martha so often alleged to be unbecoming.

“I stopped you,” she answered, stammering a little, “because, with all our little differences in Polpier, we’re all one family in a sense, are we not?  We have a sort of fellow-feeling—­eh?—­whether in trouble or prosperity.  And as a Polpier woman, born and bred, I’d like to be one of the first to wish you joy of your good fortune.”

Nicky-Nan’s face did not flush.  On the contrary, it turned to an ashen grey, as he stood before her and leant for support on his stick.  He was making inarticulate sounds in his throat.

“Who told you?” he gasped hoarsely.  Recollecting himself, he hastily changed the form of the question.  “What lies have they been tellin’ up about me now?”

Miss Oliver had meant to disclose the guinea in her palm, and tell him of her meeting with the child ’Biades.  But now she clutched the coin closer, and it gave her confidence—­a feeling that she held her trump card in reserve.

“Why, of course, they have been putting up lies, as you say,” she answered cunningly.  “There was never such a place as Polpier for tittle-tattle.  They’ve even gone so far as to set it about that it came from Germany:  which was the reason you haven’t joined up with the colours.”

“What came from Germany?”

“And of course it is partly your own fault, isn’t it?—­if you will make such a secret of the thing? . . .  Yet, I’m sure I don’t blame you.  Living the solitary life you do must make it specially trying to feel that every one is canvassing your affairs.  For my part, I said, ‘If it does come from Germany,’ I said, ’you may be sure ’tis through one of those lotteries.’” On a swift thought she added, “But that tale is all nonsense, of course:  because the Germans wouldn’t pay in guineas, would they?”

“’Guineas’?” repeated Nicky-Nan, as the solid earth seemed to fail beneath his feet and his supporting stick.

Miss Oliver, grasping the advantage of his evident distress, decided in a flash (1) that here, before her, stood the wreck of a well-connected man, cleanly in person, not ill to look upon; and (2) that she would a little longer withhold disclosure of the guinea.