With any other girl it would have been the same

Mrs. Snow, looking more sour and elderly than ever, was in the garden, engaged in the Arcadian pastime of gathering roses for decorative purposes. She was a good housekeeper, and liked to see a dainty dinner-table. Notwithstanding her disagreeable nature, she made the vicar and his son comfortable enough, and really loved them both in her sour way. Jerry, indeed, was the apple of her eye, and it was for this reason that she resented his engagement to Dinah Paslow. . It was not the individual maiden that Mrs. Snow hated, but the girl who took her son to be a husband. For the sake of her own selfishness, which she miscalled maternal love, she would have liked Jerry to remain a bachelor all his life, just to please her, and bestow all his affection on his dear mother. But the young man himself had not found that affection, although it really existed, strong enough to fill his life. Therefore he had asked Dinah to marry him, and so strongly had he held his own on the subject, that Mrs. Snow had been won over so far as to receive Dinah as a future daughter-in-law.

"Mrs. Snow," said Beatrice, when she entered the pretty grounds of the Vicarage, "I wish to speak to you particularly."

The vicar's wife looked sourly at her visitor. She hated Beatrice because of her beauty, amongst other things; and when she saw that same beauty was somewhat worn and haggard, that the girl looked ill and had lost her vivacity, she felt pleased. "Quite washed out," said Mrs. Snow to herself, and thus became more amiable. Laying down the scissors, with which she had been clipping the flowers, she advanced with what was meant to be an ingratiating smile. "My dear Miss Hedge, I am so pleased to see you. This is the first time that you have called. Come inside, please."

"Thank you. I prefer to remain in the garden and take up as little of your time as possible."

Mrs. Snow stiffened. "What an extraordinary tone to take with me," she said, with the offended air of a thorough egotist.

"Can you wonder at it? We know so little of one another."

"That is, as it may be," snapped Mrs. Snow, wondering what her visitor had come to see her about "I may know more of you than you think."

"For that reason I come to see you," said Beatrice calmly.

Her hostess started, but speedily recovered her calmness. "I really do not know what you mean, Miss Hedge," she said composedly.

"I think you know this much, that I am not Miss Hedge."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Snow, her sallow face flushing an uneasy red. "Will you not be seated?"

"Thank you." Beatrice moved towards a garden seat at the far end of the lawn; but Mrs. Snow touched her arm, and pointed to a side-path.

"I have a very secluded arbour there," she said significantly, "where we cannot be overheard." And she led the way down the path.

"The whole world may hear what I have to say," declared Beatrice boldly, and resolved to be a party to no mystery.

"But the whole world," said Mrs. Snow, stopped with a disagreeable smile, "may not hear what I may have to say--that is, if you press me."

"I want to hear everything," said the girl sharply; "for that reason I have come to you."

"I fear you will go away less easy in your mind than you came."

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. "My mind has been uneasy ever since the death of my stepfather," she retorted. "Is this the place?"

"This is the place," assented the vicaress.