"Pretty nearly every other evening," was the plain and most unwelcome answer.
Miss Hallet coughed, to cover a groan of censure. "Where do they walk to?" she asked.
"Mostly under the high cliff towards the Limpets. It's lonely there at night--nobody to be met with, ever."
"Do you walk there--that you should see them?" asked keen Miss Hallet.
"To tell you the truth, I have gone there on purpose to see," was the landlady's unblushing answer. "I don't approve of it. It's very foolish of Jane."
"Foolish; yes, very: but Jane would never behave lightly!" returned Miss Hallet, a blush of resentment on her thin cheeks.
"I don't say she would: Jane ought to have better sense than that. But it is pretty nigh as bad to give rise to talk," added candid Mrs. Bent: "many a good name has been tarnished without worse cause. It's not nice news, either, to be carried up to Greylands' Rest."
"Is it carried there, Mrs. Bent?"
"Net yet, that I know of. But it will be one of these days. I should put a summary stop to it, Miss Hallet."
"Yes, yes," said the unfortunate lady, smoothing her mittened hands together nervously, as she inwardly wondered how that was to be done, with Jane in her present temper. And, perplexed with her many difficulties, she began enlarging upon Jane's new and strange moods, even mentioning the locked drawer she had surprised Jane at, and openly wondering what she kept in it.