"At Wortley Manor, just without the confines of Steeple Hill, lived Sir John Wortley and his lady. They had come to spend the hot months down in the country, and my lady had brought with her a London lady's-maid, full of London airs and graces, styles and fashions. She was a pretty girl, this buxom Mary Linton, with flaxen curls, and light blue eyes, and a skin white as milk and soft as satin. She could sing like an angel, and dance like a fairy, and dress and talk like my lady herself.
"Of course, before she had been a month in the place, she had turned the heads of all the young fellows in the village, Stephen Dane's among the rest. But while she coquetted with all, she smiled most sweetly on Stephen, with his three hundred pounds laid by in bank, his broad shoulders, his lofty stature and his hearty looks. Three months after she came to Wortley Manor, she was Stephen Dane's wife.
"That marriage was the beginning of all the trouble, Mollie. They left the farm, this young pair, and set up a public-house. A public suited Mary Dane to the life. She flaunted in gay dresses and bright ribbons, and gossiped over the bar with the customers, and had all the news of the place put at her tongue's end. And Stephen, he took to drink—a little, at first, to be jovial with the customers; more and more gradually, until, at the end of the honey-moon, he was half his time on the fuddle. And Mary Dane didn't care. She laughed in her pretty way when people talked.
"'Let him take his glass, Mariam,' says she to me. 'He's fonder of me in his cups, and better-natured every way, than when he's sober. As long as my man doesn't beat me and pull the house about our heads, I'll never say him nay.'
"It was near the end of the second month that a sick traveler stopped at the Wortley Arms—so they called the inn—and lay very ill there for weeks and weeks. He had taken cold and got a fever, and he was very poorly and like to die. Mary Dane, with all her airy ways, had a tender heart and a soft head, and she turned to and nursed the sick man like a sister. They took such care of him at the Wortley Arms that he got well, and in three weeks was able to be up and about.
"This strange gentleman gave the name of Mr. Walls; and he was young and handsome, and very rich. He spent money like water; he paid the doctor and the landlord and the nurses as if he had been a prince. He had a pleasant word and jest for every one. He was hand and glove with Stephen Dane, and heaped presents on presents on his wife. He gave her silk dresses and gold rings and costly shawls and gay bonnets until people began to talk. What did he care for their talk? what did Mary Dane, either? He lingered and lingered. The talking grew louder, until, at last, it reached the ears of Stephen Dane. He took it quietly. 'It's mighty dull for the likes of you here, Mr. Walls,' he says to the gentleman, looking him full in the eye. 'It's no place for a young gentleman, in my notion. I think you had better be going.'
"'Do you?' says Mr. Walls, back again, as cool as himself. 'You are right, I dare say. I'll settle my bill to-night and be off to-morrow.'
"He did settle his bill at the bar before they parted, took a last glass with Stephen Dane, and walked up to his room, whistling. Steeple Hill never saw him more. When morning came he was far away, and Mary Dane with him."
Again Miriam paused; again Mollie held the wine-cup to her lips; again she drank and went on:
"I couldn't tell you, Mollie, if I would, the shock and the scandal that ran through Steeple Hill, and I wouldn't if I could. If it were in my power, such horrors would never reach your innocent ears. But they were gone, and Stephen Dane was like a man mad. He drank, and drank, and drank until he was blind drunk, and then, in spite of everybody, set off to go after them. Before he had got ten yards from his own doorstep he fell down in a fit, blood pouring from his month and nostrils. That night he died.