‘You were asking me about Mr. Ackroyd,’ she said, when they had gone into the parlour.  ’Would you like to know something I heard about him last night?’

Lydia knew that it was something disagreeable; Mary’s air of discharging a duty sufficiently proved that.

‘What is it?’ she asked coldly.

’They were talking about him here when I came back last night.  He’s begun to go about with that girl Totty Nancarrow.’

Lydia cast down her eyes.  Mary keeping silence, she said: 

‘Well, what if he has?’

‘I think it’s right you should know, on Thyrza’s account.’

‘Thyrza has nothing to do with Mr. Ackroyd; you know that, Mary.’

’But there’s something else.  He’s begun to drink, Lydia.  Mr. Raggles saw him in a public-house somewhere last night, and he was quite tipsy.’

Lydia said nothing.  She held a market bag before her, and her white knuckles proved how tightly she clutched the handles.

‘You remember what I once said,’ Mary continued.  There was absolutely no malice in her tone, but mere satisfaction in proving that the premises whence her conclusions had been drawn were undeniably sound.  She was actuated neither by personal dislike of Ackroyd nor by jealousy; but she could not resist this temptation of illustrating her principles by such a noteworthy instance.  ’Now wasn’t I right, Lydia?’

Lydia looked up with hot cheeks.

‘I don’t believe it!’ she said vehemently.  ’Who’s Mr. Raggles?  How do you know he tells the truth?—­And what is it to me, whether it’s true or not?’

’You were so sure that it made no difference what any one believed, Lydia,’ said the other, with calm persistency.

’And I say the same still, and I always will say it?  You’re glad when anybody speaks against Mr. Ackroyd, and you’d believe them, whatever they said.  I’ll never go to chapel again with you, Mary, as long as I live!  You’re unkind, and it’s your chapel-going that makes you so!  You’d no business to call me in to tell me things of this kind.  After to-day, please don’t mention Mr. Ackroyd’s name; you know nothing at all about him.’

Without waiting for a reply she left the parlour and went on her way.  Mary was rather pale, but she felt convinced of the truth of what she had reported, and she had done her plain duty in drawing the lesson.  Whether Lydia would acknowledge that seemed doubtful.  The outburst of anger confirmed Mary in strange suspicions which had for some time lurked in her mind.

On Sunday evening Lydia dressed as if to go to chapel, and left the house at the usual hour.  She had heard nothing from Mary Bower, and her resentment was yet warm.  She did not like to tell Thyrza what had happened, but went out to spend the time as best she could.

Almost as soon as her sister was gone Thyrza paid a little attention to her dress and went downstairs.  She knocked at the Grails’ parlour; it was Gilbert’s voice that answered.