'Isn't the wind dreadful, Jane?' said Clare presently. 'We couldn't have had a more dreary and depressing day for coming here.'

'It's terrible lonely, miss. How you young ladies will put up with it is more than Martha and me can imagine! My home is in the country, so I don't mind it. I never could abear London with its fog and dirt. Mrs. Tucker has been telling me and Martha queer tales about the gentleman who lived here.'

Clare wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and sat down by the fire. She rarely checked Jane's flow of talk, and perhaps that was why the maid liked her.

'What kind of tales?'

'Mrs. Tucker says he ought to have the property here called The Park, for he is the eldest son, and his younger brother, Major Lester, has taken it all, for Mr. Tom Lester offended his father by marrying a foreign lady, and he struck him out of his will. Mrs. Tucker says she believes the quarrel last autumn was about Major Lester's son, who is missing somewhere abroad, and who Mr. Tom Lester hates. And did you hear about the cupboard downstairs? Mrs. Tucker says she never has been inside it herself, for Mr. Lester only used to open it late at night, and he's gone away and taken the key with him, and says it isn't to be touched. I says to Mrs. Tucker that there might be anything in the cupboard, and Martha says she's afraid to go near it, for you do hear such dreadful tales about locked cupboards, and skeletons inside them, don't you, miss?'

'Only in your penny novelettes, that do you more harm than good, Jane!' said Clare a little shortly. I think if Mrs. Tucker is such a gossip, we shan't care to have her about the house. Where does she live now?'

'She's going to stay with her married sister in Brambleton, miss, and she's going out cooking if she can. I says to Martha that her tongue runned away with her, we could hardly get in a word, she talks so; but she's a very good-natured person, and has given Martha and me a lot of information about the neighbourhood.'

Clare did not respond, but soon dismissed Jane, and then sat for some time in dreams before her fire. At last with a little sigh she took hold of her Bible, to have her usual evening reading out of it. She turned to Nannie's Psalm, and listlessly scanned the verse that had been given her.

'Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.'

'Rest!' she mused; 'it is the one thing I never have really experienced. I always seem to be wishing for, and wanting, what never comes to me. I don't suppose any but a very old person who has lived her life, and has no hopes left, can rest and wait patiently. I don't know why I always seem waiting for something big to come and satisfy my life. I remember when first Hugh spoke to me, and we were engaged, I hoped I should be perfectly satisfied and happy, but in some ways he has disappointed me. He is so—so humdrum and easily pleased, and wrapped up in his profession. I wish he were more intellectual. I do love him, of course I do, but he hasn't filled my life as I thought he would. He doesn't understand some of my thoughts about things. I often wonder why I can't be as easily pleased with everybody and everything as Elfie is. Nannie would say it is because my religion is not real. I don't feel I could rest in the Lord. He seems far away, and there are so many difficulties, and sometimes I get to doubt everything! I wish I had Nannie's faith.'