‘I always said so,’ was Mrs. Lowme’s reply, when he made the observation to her; ’she was always so very full of pretty attentions to me when I was ill.  But they tell me now she’s turned Tryanite; if that’s it we shan’t agree again.  It’s very inconsistent in her, I think, turning round in that way, after being the foremost to laugh at the Tryanite cant, and especially in a woman of her habits; she should cure herself of them before she pretends to be over-religious.’

‘Well, I think she means to cure herself, do you know,’ said Mr. Pilgrim, whose goodwill towards Janet was just now quite above that temperate point at which he could indulge his feminine patients with a little judicious detraction.  ’I feel sure she has not taken any stimulants all through her husband’s illness; and she has been constantly in the way of them.  I can see she sometimes suffers a good deal of depression for want of them—­it shows all the more resolution in her.  Those cures are rare:  but I’ve known them happen sometimes with people of strong will.’

Mrs. Lowme took an opportunity of retailing Mr. Pilgrim’s conversation to Mrs. Phipps, who, as a victim of Pratt and plethora, could rarely enjoy that pleasure at first-hand.  Mrs. Phipps was a woman of decided opinions, though of wheezy utterance.

‘For my part,’ she remarked, ’I’m glad to hear there’s any likelihood of improvement in Mrs. Dempster, but I think the way things have turned out seems to show that she was more to blame than people thought she was; else, why should she feel so much about her husband?  And Dempster, I understand, has left his wife pretty nearly all his property to do as she likes with; that isn’t behaving like such a very bad husband.  I don’t believe Mrs. Dempster can have had so much provocation as they pretended.  I’ve known husbands who’ve laid plans for tormenting their wives when they’re underground—­tying up their money and hindering them from marrying again.  Not that I should ever wish to marry again; I think one husband in one’s life is enough in all conscience’;—­here she threw a fierce glance at the amiable Mr. Phipps, who was innocently delighting himself with the facetiae in the ‘Rotherby Guardian,’ and thinking the editor must be a droll fellow—­’but it’s aggravating to be tied up in that way.  Why, they say Mrs. Dempster will have as good as six hundred a-year at least.  A fine thing for her, that was a poor girl without a farthing to her fortune.  It’s well if she doesn’t make ducks and drakes of it somehow.’

Mrs. Phipps’s view of Janet, however, was far from being the prevalent one in Milby.  Even neighbours who had no strong personal interest in her, could hardly see the noble-looking woman in her widow’s dress, with a sad sweet gravity in her face, and not be touched with fresh admiration for her—­and not feel, at least vaguely, that she had entered on a new life in which it was a sort of desecration to