When Mrs. Quiggin came down to breakfast next morning, a change both in her appearance and in her manner caught the eye and ear of Jenny Crow. Her fringe was combed back from her forehead, and her speech, even in the first salutation, gave a delicate hint of the broad Manx accent. “Ho, ho! what’s this?” thought Jenny, and she had not long to wait for an answer.

An English waiter, who affected the ways of a French one, was fussing around with needless inquiries—would Madame have this; would Madame do that?—and when this person had scraped himself out of the room Mrs. Quiggin drew a long breath and said, “I don’t think I care so very much for this sort of thing after all, Jenny.”

“What sort of thing, Nelly?”

“Waiters and servants, and hotels and things,” said Nelly.

“Really!” said Jenny.

“It’s wonderful how much happier you are when you can be your own servant, and boil your own kettle and mash your own tea, and lay your own cloth, and clear away and wash up afterward.”

“Do you say so, Nelly?”

“Deed I do, though, Jenny. There’s some life in the like of that—seeing to yourself and such like. And what are the pleasures of towns and streets and hotels and servants, and such botherations to those of a sweet old farm that is all your own somewhere? And, to think—to think, Jenny, getting up in the summer morning before the sun itself, when the light is that cool dead gray, and the last stars are dying off, and the first birds are calling to their mates that are still asleep, and then going round to the cowhouse in the clear, crisp, ringing air, and startling the rabbits and the hares that are hopping about in the haggard—O! it’s delightful!”

“Really now!” said Jenny.

“And then the men coming down stairs, half awake and yawning, in their shirt sleeves and their stocking feet, and pushing on their boots and clattering out to the stable, and shouting to the horses that are stamping in their stalls; and then you yoursef busy as Thop’s wife laying the cups and saucers, and sending the boys to the well for water, and filling the big crock to the brim, and hanging the kettle on the hook, and setting somebody to blow the fire while the gorse flames and crackles, and bustling here and bustling there, and stirring yoursef terr’ble, and getting breakfast over, and starting everybody away to his work in the fields—aw, there’s nothing like it in the world.”

“And do you think that, Nelly?” said Jenny.

“Why, yes; why shouldn’t I?” said Nelly.

“Well, well,” said Jenny. “‘There’s nowt so queer as folk,’ as they say in Manchester.

“What do you mean, Jenny Crow?”

“I fancy I see you,” said Jenny, “bowling off to Balla—what d’ye call it?—and doing all that by yourself.”

“Oh!” said Nelly.

Mrs. Quiggin had begun to speak in a voice that was something between a shrill laugh and a cry, and she ended with a smothered gurgle, such as comes from the throat of a pea-hen. After breakfast Peggy Quine came chirping around with a hundred inquiries about the packing of luggage which was then proceeding, with a view to the carriage that had been ordered for eleven o’clock. Mrs. Quiggin betrayed only the most languid interest in these hurrying operations, and settled herself with her needlework in a chair near to Jenny Crow. Jenny watched her, and thought, “Now, wouldn’t she jump at a good excuse for not going at all?”

Presently Mrs. Quiggin said, in a tone of well-acted unconcern, “And so you say that the poor man you tell me of is still loving his wife in spite of all she has done to him?”

“Yes, Nelly. All men are like that—more fools they,” said Jenny.

Nelly’s face brightened over the needles in her hand, and her parted lips seemed to whisper, “Bless them!” But in a note of delicious insincerity she only said aloud, “Not all, Jenny; surely not all.”

“Yes, all,” said Jenny, with emphasis. “Do you think I don’t know the men better than you do?”

Nelly dropped her needles and raised her face. “Why, Jenny,” she said, “however can that be?—you’ve never even been married.”

“That’s why, my dear,” said Jenny.

Nelly laughed; then returning to the attack, she said, with a poor pretense at a yawn, “So you think a man may love a woman even after—after she has turned him out of doors, as you say?”

“Yes, but that isn’t to say that he’ll ever come back to her,” said Jenny.

The needles dropped to the lap again. “No? Why shouldn’t he then?”

“Why? Because men are never good at the bended knee business,” said Jenny. “A man on his knees is ridiculous. It must be his legs that look so silly. If I had done anything to a man, and he went down on his knees to me, I would——”

“What, Jenny?”

Jenny lifted her skirt an inch or two, and showed a dainty foot swinging to and fro. “Kick him,” she answered.

Nelly laughed again, and said, “And if you were a man, and a woman did so, what then?”

“Why lift her up and kiss her, and forgive her, of course,” said Jenny.

Nelly tingled with delight, and burned to ask Jenny if she should not at least let Captain Davy know that she was leaving Douglas and going home. But being a true woman, she asked something else instead.

“So you think, Jenny,” she said, “that your poor friend will never go back to his wife?”

“I’m sure he won’t,” said Jenny. “Didn’t I tell you?” she added, straightening up.

“What?” said Nelly, with a quiver of alarm.

“That he’s going back to sea,” said Jenny.

“To sea!” cried Nelly, dropping her needles entirely. “Back to sea?” she said, in a shrill voice. “And without even saying ‘good-by!’”

“Good-by to whom, my dear?” said Jenny. “To me?”

“To his wife, of course,” said Nelly, huskily.

“Well, we don’t know that, do we?” said Jenny. “And, besides, why should he?”

“If he doesn’t he’s a cruel, heartless, unfeeling, unforgiving monster,” said Nelly.

And then Jenny burned in her turn to ask if Nelly herself had not intended to do as much by Captain Davy, but, being a true woman as well as her adversary, she found a crooked way to the plain question. “Is it at eleven,” she said, “that the carriage is to come for you?”

Mrs. Quiggin had recovered herself in a moment, and then there was a delicate bout of thrust and parry. “I’m so sorry for your sake, Jenny,” she said, in the old tone of delicious insincerity, “that the poor fellow is married.”

“Gracious me, for my sake? Why?” said Jenny.

“I thought you were half in love with him, you know,” said Nelly.

“Half?” cried Jenny. “I’m over head and ears in love with him.”

“That’s a pity,” said Nelly; “for, of course, you’ll give him up now that you know he has a wife.”

“What of that? If he has a wife I have no husband—so it’s as broad as it’s long,” said Jenny.

“Jenny!” cried Nelly.

“And, oh!” said Jenny, “there is one thing I didn’t tell you. But you’ll keep it secret? Promise me you’ll keep it secret. I’m to meet him again by appointment this very night.”

“But, Jenny!”

“Yes, in the garden of this house—by the waterfall at eight o’clock. I’ll slip out after dinner in my cloak with the hood to it.”

“Jenny Crow!”

“It’s our last chance, it seems. The poor fellow sails at midnight, or tomorrow morning, or to-morrow night, or the next night, or sometime. So you see he’s not going away without saying good-by to somebody. I couldn’t help telling you, Nelly. It’s nice to share a secret with a friend one can trust, and if he is another woman’s husband—”

Nell had risen to her feet with her face aflame.

“But you mustn’t do it,” she cried. “It’s shocking, it’s horrible—common morality is against it.”

Jenny looked wondrous grave. “That’s it, you see,” she said. “Common morality always is against everything that’s nice and agreeable.”

“I’m ashamed of you, Jenny Crow. I am; indeed, I am. I could never have believed it of you; indeed, I couldn’t. And the man you speak of is no better than you are, and all his talk of loving the wife is hypocrisy and deceit; and the poor woman herself should know of it, and come down on you both and shame you—indeed, she should,” cried Nelly, and she flounced out of the room in a fury.

Jenny watched her go and thought to herself. “She’ll keep that appointment for me at eight o’clock to-night by the waterfall.” Presently she heard Mrs. Quiggin with a servant of the hotel countermanding the order for the carriage at eleven, and engaging it instead for the extraordinary hour of nine at night. “She intends to keep it,” thought Jenny.

“And now,” she said, settling herself at the writing-table; “now for the other simpleton.”

“Tell D. Q.,” she wrote, addressing Lovibond; “that E. Q. goes home by carriage at nine o’clock to-night, and that you have appointed to meet her for a last farewell at eight by the waterfall in the gardens of Castle Mona. Then meet me on the pier at seven-thirty.”