“I have been greatly afraid,” said Mrs. Little, “that the Society would be called upon to help her, if she gets worse again; She seems to be living, at present, on that widow Hardyng.  How are those two to get through the winter, I should like to know?  As for the child, it will have to be bound out to somebody who will make it work, and then there will be an end of all these mincing lady airs.  One thing I know, it’s out of our power to help them.  She must have some relations somewhere, I should think.  I wonder what her antecedents really are, any way.  I could never quite make the girl out yet.”

“Then I am a little shrewder than the rest of you, that’s all,” spoke up the voice of Mrs. Caroline Newcomer.  “I found her out some time ago.  Listen, ladies, all of you who have any curiosity upon the subject.  I learned her whole history through one of my servants, who had lived in the same city from whence this mysterious personage came.  By a curious coincidence, these Graystones, mother and daughter, came and took lodgings beneath the same lowly roof to which the poverty of this Mrs. Baily had driven her for shelter.

“Of their former life, my informant knew little, but when she first became acquainted with them, they were miserably poor, and in debt to their landlady.  At length Miss Clemence Graystone succeeded, by the rarest good fortune, in obtaining a position as governess in a wealthy family.  She was, however, afterwards dismissed, (as Mrs. Baily afterwards learned, through one of the employees,) in disgrace, for having designs upon a young gentleman of fortune—­the uncle, I believe, of her pupils.

“How they managed to live on through the winter was a wonder to the whole household, or pay the expenses of the widow Graystone’s sickness and death, which occurred in the spring.  The landlady seemed to think everything of them, and refused to satisfy anybody’s curiosity in regard to the matter.  The girl Clemence went away with a strange woman, as soon as she recovered from an illness that followed her mother’s death; and that was the last known of her until she turns up here, to make capital out of her pale face and mourning garments, which, I dare say, she thinks look interesting.

“So that is the whole story about this young woman, who is probably at this moment laughing quietly in her sleeve, at the clever way she has imposed upon the inhabitants of this benighted village.  I took pains, since her dismissal by the School Committee, to write and find out these particulars; and while I was about it, I thought I would also make an effort to discover something of the former life of the woman who calls herself Ulrica Hardyng.  I always had my suspicions of her, which you will see have been duly verified;”—­and she proceeded to relate, with great animation, to the gaping crowd around her, a garbled account of the misfortunes of the divorced wife.

“And now, madam,” said a calm, low voice behind her, as she finished speaking, “since you are so good at relating other people’s histories, suppose you give these worthy persons, a similar account of your own proceedings and peregrinations?”