I thought of all the others who secretly or openly expressed the same opinion, and felt my heart grow lighter. Then I thought of Rhoda Colwell, and then——
"Just what time was it," I asked, "when you were away in August? Was it before the seventeenth, or after? I inquire, because——"
But evidently she did not care why I inquired.
"It was during that week," she broke in. "I remember because it was on the sixteenth that Mr. Pollard died, and I was not here to attend the funeral. I came back——"
But it was no matter to me now when she came back. She had not been at home the night when Mr. Barrows was beguiled into his first visit to the mill, and she had mentioned a name I had long been eager to have introduced into the conversation.
"You knew Mr. Pollard?" I therefore interposed without ceremony. "He was a very rich man, was he not?"
"Yes," she assented. "I suppose the children will have the whole property, now that the old lady is gone. I hope Mr. Harrington will be satisfied. He just married that girl for her money. That, I am sure, you will hear everybody say."
"Yet she is exceedingly pretty," I suggested.
"Oh, yes, too pretty; she makes one think of a wax doll. But these English lords don't care for beauty without there is a deal of hard cash to back it, and if Agnes Pollard had been as poor as—what other beauty have we in town?"
"There is a girl called Rhoda Colwell," I ventured.