It was a month later that through the vicar’s wife she reached a discovery and a climax.  She had heard one morning from this lady of a misfortune which had befallen a small farmer.  It was a misfortune which was an actual catastrophe to a man in his position.  His house had caught fire during a gale of wind and the fire had spread to the outbuildings and rickyard and swept away all his belongings, his house, his furniture, his hayricks, and stored grain, and even his few cows and horses.  He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and his small insurance had lapsed the day before the fire.  He was absolutely ruined, and with his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary and starvation.

Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who was his companion in calamity sobbing in the hall.  A child of a few weeks was in her arms, and two small creatures clung crying to her skirts.

“We’ve worked hard,” she wept; “we have, ma’am.  Father, he’s always been steady, an’ up early an’ late.  P’r’aps it’s the Lord’s ’and, as you say, ma’am, but we’ve been decent people an’ never missed church when we could ’elp it—­father didn’t deserve it—­that he didn’t.”

She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness.  Rosalie literally quaked with sympathy.  She poured forth her pity in such words as the poor woman had never heard spoken by a great lady to a humble creature like herself.  The villagers found the new Lady Anstruthers’ interviews with them curiously simple and suggestive of an equality they could not understand.  Stornham was a conservative old village, where the distinction between the gentry and the peasants was clearly marked.  The cottagers were puzzled by Sir Nigel’s wife, but they decided that she was kind, if unusual.

As Rosalie talked to the farmer’s wife she longed for her father’s presence.  She had remembered a time when a man in his employ had lost his all by fire, the small house he had just made his last payment upon having been burned to the ground.  He had lost one of his children in the fire, and the details had been heartrending.  The entire Vanderpoel household had wept on hearing them, and Mr. Vanderpoel had drawn a cheque which had seemed like a fortune to the sufferer.  A new house had been bought, and Mrs. Vanderpoel and her daughters and friends had bestowed furniture and clothing enough to make the family comfortable to the verge of luxury.

“See, you poor thing,” said Rosalie, glowing with memories of this incident, her homesick young soul comforted by the mere likeness in the two calamities.  “I brought my cheque book with me because I meant to help you.  A man worked for my father had his house burned, just as yours was, and my father made everything all right for him again.  I’ll make it all right for you; I’ll make you a cheque for a hundred pounds now, and then when your husband begins to build I’ll give him some more.”

The woman gasped for breath and turned pale.  She was frightened.  It really seemed as if her ladyship must have lost her wits a little.  She could not mean this.  The vicaress turned pale also.