‘No, thank you, Fanny; I have very nearly done,’ she said, marking the signs of eagerness on her sister’s part.  ’Oh, by the bye, did that hot bottle go down to Lilian Giles?’

‘Yes, ma’am; Mrs. Giles came up for it.’

‘Did she say whether Lily was well enough to see Miss Gillian?’

Mrs. Mount coughed a peculiar cough that her mistresses well knew to signify that she could tell them something they would not like to hear, if they chose to ask her, and it was the younger who put the question—–­

‘Fanny, did she say anything?’

’Well, Miss Ada, I told her she must be mistaken, but she stuck to it, though she said she never would have breathed a word if Miss Gillian had not come back again, but she thought you should know it.’

‘Know what?’ demanded Jane.

’Well, Miss Jane, she should say ’tis the talk that Miss Gillian, when you have thought her reading to the poor girl, has been running down to the works—–­and ’tis only the ignorance of them that will talk, but they say it is to meet a young man.  She says, Mrs. Giles do, that she never would have noticed such talk, but that the young lady did always seem in a hurry, only just reading a chapter, and never stopping to talk to poor Lily after it; and she has seen her herself going down towards the works, instead of towards home, ma’am.  And she said she could not bear that reading to her girl should be made a colour for such doings.’

‘Certainly not, if it were as she supposes,’ said Miss Mohun, sitting very upright, and beating her own head vigorously with a very prickly brush; ’but you may tell her, Fanny, that I know all about it, and that her friend is Miss White, who you remember spent an evening here.’

Fanny’s good-humoured face cleared up.  ’Yes, ma’am, I told her that I was quite sure that Miss Gillian would not go for to do anything wrong, and that it could be easy explained; but people has tongues, you see.’

‘You were quite right to tell us, Fanny.  Good-night.’

‘People has tongues!’ repeated Adeline, when that excellent person had disappeared.  ’Yes, indeed, they have.  But, Jenny, do you really mean to say that you know all about this?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

’Oh, I wish you had been at home to-day when Victoria came in.  It really is a serious business.’

’Victoria!  What has she to do with it?  I should have thought her Marchioness-ship quite out of the region of gossip, though, for that matter, grandees like it quite as much as other people.’

’Don’t, Jane , you know it does concern her through companionship for Phyllis, and she was very kind.’

’Oh yes, I can see her sailing in, magnificently kind from her elevation.  But how in the world did she manage to pick up all this in the time?’ said poor Jane, tired and pestered into the sharpness of her early youth.

’Dear Jenny, I wish I had said nothing to-night.  Do wait till you are rested.’