Such was the woman to whom Betty Tosswill had thought it just as well to go herself with the news of Godfrey Radmore’s coming visit to Old Place, and as she walked slowly up the village street, the girl tried to remind herself that Miss Pendarth had a very kind side to her nature.  Of all the letters Betty had received at the time of her brother’s death, she had had none of more sincerely expressed sympathy than that from this old friend whom she was now going to see.  And yet?  Yet what pain and distress Miss Pendarth had caused them all at the time of the Rosamund trouble!  Instead of behaving like a true friend, and, as far as possible, stopping the flow of gossip, she had added to its volume, causing the story to be known to a far larger circle than would otherwise have been the case.  But Betty, honesty itself, was well aware that her step-mother had made a serious mistake in not telling Miss Pendarth what there was to tell.  A confidence she never betrayed.

Betty also reminded herself ruefully that in the far-away days when Godfrey Radmore had been so often an inmate of Old Place, there had been something like open war between himself and Miss Pendarth, and when she had heard of his extraordinary good fortune, she had not hidden her regret that it had fallen on one so unworthy.

As Betty went up to the iron gate and unlatched it, she half hoped that the owner of Rose Cottage would be out.  Miss Pendarth, unlike most of her neighbours, always kept her front door locked—­you could not turn the handle and walk right into the house.

To-day she answered Betty’s ring herself, and with a smile of welcome lighting up her rather grim face she drew the girl into the hall and kissed her affectionately.

“I was just starting to pay my first call on Mrs. Crofton.  But I’m so glad.  Perhaps you’ll be able to tell me something about her.  I hear she had supper with you the day she arrived!”

As she spoke, she led the way into a little room off the hall.  “I’ve been trying to make out to what branch of the Croftons she belongs,” she went on reflectively.  “There was a man called Cecil Crofton in my second brother’s regiment a matter of forty years ago.”

“She looks quite young,” said Betty doubtfully.

“Old enough to know better than to get herself talked about the first hour she arrived,” observed Miss Pendarth grimly.

“I don’t think she can have done that—­”

“Not only did she bring a man with her, a Captain Tremaine,—­but just before he left they had some kind of quarrel which was overheard by two of the tradespeople who were calling to leave their cards.”

“How—­how horrid,” murmured Betty.  But what really shocked her was that Miss Pendarth should listen to that sort of gossip.

“It was horrid and absurd too, for the man had turned the key in the lock of the sitting-room, and it stuck for a minute or two when one of them tried to unlock the door in answer to the maid’s knock!”