"That," said she, with a look of astonishing benignity, "would be just what I was being led to suppose was the heighth of the impossible."
At which, of course, we at once began discussing ways and means. But, delicious though this prospect seemed, I determined that nothing should persuade me to go unless all hope of Fanny's coming home proved vain. Naturally, from Fanny memory darted to Wanderslore. I laughed up at my landlady, holding her finger, and suggested demurely that we should go off together on the morrow to see if my stranger were true to his word.
"We have kept him a very long time, and if, as you seem to think, Mrs Monnerie isn't such a wonderful lady, you may decide that after all he is a gentleman."
She enjoyed my little joke, was pleased that I had been won over, but refused to accept my reasoning, though the topic itself was after her heart.
"The point is, miss, not whether your last conquest is a wonderful lady, or a grand lady, or even a perfect lady for the matter of that, but, well, a lady. It's that's the kind in my experience that comes nearest to being as uncommon a sort as any sort of a good woman."
This was a wholly unexpected vista for me, and I peered down its smooth, green, aristocratic sward with some little awe.
"As for the young fellow who made himself so free in his manners," she went on placidly, so that I had to scamper back to pick her up again, "I have no doubt seeing will be believing."
"But what is the story of Wanderslore?" I pressed her none too honestly.
The story—and this time Mrs Bowater poured it out quite freely—was precisely what I had been told already, but with the addition that the young woman who had hanged herself in one of its attics had done so for jealousy.
"Jealousy! But of whom?" I inquired.