‘You niver spoke a truer word than that, my dear,’ said Mrs. Linnet, who accepted all religious phrases, but was extremely rationalistic in her interpretation; ’for if iver Old Harry appeared in a human form, it’s that Dempster.  It was all through him as we got cheated out o’ Pye’s Croft, making out as the title wasn’t good.  Such lawyer’s villany!  As if paying good money wasn’t title enough to anything.  If your father as is dead and gone had been worthy to know it!  But he’ll have a fall some day, Dempster will.  Mark my words.’

‘Ah, out of his carriage, you mean,’ said Miss Pratt, who, in the movement occasioned by the clearing of the table, had lost the first part of Mrs. Linnet’s speech.  ’It certainly is alarming to see him driving home from Rotherby, flogging his galloping horse like a madman.  My brother has often said he expected every Thursday evening to be called in to set some of Dempster’s bones; but I suppose he may drop that expectation now, for we are given to understand from good authority that he has forbidden his wife to call my brother in again either to herself or her mother.  He swears no Tryanite doctor shall attend his family.  I have reason to believe that Pilgrim was called in to Mrs. Dempster’s mother the other day.’

’Poor Mrs. Raynor! she’s glad to do anything for the sake of peace and quietness,’ said Mrs. Pettifer; ’but it’s no trifle at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.’

‘What trouble that poor woman has to bear in her old age!’ said Mary Linnet, ’to see her daughter leading such a life!—­an only daughter, too, that she doats on.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Pratt.  ’We, of course, know more about it than most people, my brother having attended the family so many years.  For my part, I never thought well of the marriage; and I endeavoured to dissuade my brother when Mrs. Raynor asked him to give Janet away at the wedding.  ‘If you will take my advice, Richard,’ I said, ’you will have nothing to do with that marriage.’  And he has seen the justice of my opinion since.  Mrs. Raynor herself was against the connection at first; but she always spoiled Janet, and I fear, too, she was won over by a foolish pride in having her daughter marry a professional man.  I fear it was so.  No one but myself, I think, foresaw the extent of the evil.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Pettifer, ’Janet had nothing to look forward to but being a governess; and it was hard for Mrs. Raynor to have to work at millinering—­a woman well brought up, and her husband a man who held his head as high as any man in Thurston.  And it isn’t everybody that sees everything fifteen years beforehand.  Robert Dempster was the cleverest man in Milby; and there weren’t many young men fit to talk to Janet.’