"That she did, ma'am," continued Mrs. Lane, "and the more's the pity. I'm afeard she loves him still, she looks so pale and thin; and the bright eyes that were so full of joy and fun, have a mournful, downward look. It grieves me to see the poor thing. But she never says a word, never a word; and between ourselves, Miss Watling, Gilbert Rushmere might have done worse."
"Not without he had taken a woman off the streets. Just imagine Dorothy Chance a captain's lady," said Miss Watling. "The girl's uncommon handsome," continued Mrs. Barford. "I believe that she is born to good fortune."
"I suppose you have faith in the adage, 'Bad beginnings make good endings.' I am sure her beginning was low enough, and bad enough."
"Oh, Nancy, don't be so severe, we know nothing about that. I saw the corpse of the mother; and though, to be sure, she was bundled up in dirty, sorry-looking clothes, she had the smallest, whitest hand I ever saw. It did not look like a hand that had ever dabbled in dirty work, but had belonged to a real lady; and the ring we took off the finger was a wedding ring, and of real gold. She must have prized that ring very much; or I'm thinking that she would have sold it, to procure a night's lodging for herself and her child. Dorothy is not like her mother, if that woman was her mother; she has not a common look; she speaks, and walks, and acts like one belonging to a better class, and I believe that she will yet turn out to be a lady."
"Now, Mrs. Barford, that do put me in mind of a conversation I had the other day with Mrs. Brand, my lord's house-keeper," said Mrs. Lane. "Mrs. Brand is an old friend of mine, and she told me—but pray, ladies, don't let this go any further—she told me that my Lord Wilton was so much struck with Dorothy, and her neat pretty ways, that he had her up into his library, and talked with her for an hour or more, and he found out a great resemblance between her and his mother. Mrs. Brand says that the likeness is kind of miraculous, and my lord asked Dorothy a heap of questions, and said that she should never want a friend while he lived."
"Hem," responded Miss Watling, tapping her foot quickly on the floor; "lords don't take notice of girls like her for nothing. Miss Dolly had better mind what she's about."
"Didn't you hear that she was going to school?" said Mrs. Sly, the publican's wife, who had sat silent all this time, intently listening to the gossip of the others. Mrs. Sly was an excellent listener, and by no means a bad sort of woman, and much fonder of hearing than retailing gossip. She was esteemed in the village as a nice quiet body, who never said any ill of her neighbours, but Mrs. Sly never objected to hearing others talk about them.
"To school," said Mrs. Barford, sitting forward in her chair, and opening her eyes wide; "I thought the girl could read and write. She and Gilbert went together to Brewer's school down in the village for years. Mrs. Brewer always said that Dorothy was the cleverest child she ever taught."
"Well, Mrs. Martin is teaching her now."
"Oh, I knew she was helping our parson's wife in the Sunday school," replied Miss Watling. "That absurd piece of folly that my lord wants to thrust upon us."